And the baby would stretch his arms responsive to Abel's expressive
signs, and cry aloud for the vanishing bird.

If no living creature crossed the ether, there were the clouds.
Sometimes a long triangular mass of small white fleecy clouds would
stretch across half the heavens, having its shortest side upon the
horizon, and its point at the zenith, where one white fleece seemed
to be leading a gradually widening flock across the sky.

"See then!" the nurse-boy would cry. "See to the pretty sheep up
yonder! Janny mind un! So! so!"

And if some small gray scud, floating lower, ran past the far-away
cirrus, Abel would add with a quaint seriousness, "'Tis the sheep-
dog. How he runs then! Bow-wow!"

At sunset such a flock wore golden fleeces, and to them, and to the
crimson hues about them, the little Jan stretched his fingers, and
crowed, as if he would have clutched the western sky as he clutched
his own red shawl.

But Abel was better pleased when, in the dusk, the flock became dark
gray.

"They be Master Salter's pigs now," said he. For pigs in Abel's
native place were both plentiful and black; and he had herded Master
Salter's flock (five and twenty black, and three spotted) for a
whole month before his services were required as nurse-boy to his
sister.