Whenever Rose appeared thus suddenly in my quiet retreat, I felt
sure some greater uproar than usual was going on down at the
wool-shed, and, more than once, on inquiry, I found Rose's nerves
must have been tried to the utmost before she turned and fled.

As for the intelligence of sheep-dogs, a volume could be written on
the facts concerning them, and a still more entertaining book on the
fictions, for a New Zealand shepherd will always consider it a point
of honour to cap his neighbour's anecdote of _his_ dog's sagacity,
by a yet stronger proof of canine intelligence. I shall only,
briefly allude to one dog, whose history will probably be placed in
the colonial archives,--a colley, who knows his master's brand; and
who will, when the sheep get boxed, that is mixed together, pick
out; with unfailing accuracy, all the bleating members of his own
flock from amid the confused, terrified mass. As for the patience
of a good dog in crossing sheep over a river, I have witnessed that
myself, and been forced to draw conclusions very much in favour of
the dog over the human beings who were directing the operation.
Some dogs again, who are perfectly helpless with sheep, are
unrivalled with cattle, and I have stood on the edge of a swamp more
than once, and seen a dog go after a couple of milch cows, and fetch
them out of a herd of bullocks, returning for the second "milky
mother" after the first had been brought right up within reach of
the stockman's lash.

Then among my horse friends was a certain Suffolk "Punch," who had
been christened the "Artful Dodger," from his trick of
counterfeiting lameness the moment he was put in the shafts of a
dray. That is to say if the dray was loaded; so long as it was