Sometimes, not often,
as he thinks of Patience Woolsworthy a smile comes across his face.
ANTHONY GARSTIN'S COURTSHIP
By Hubert Crackanthorpe
(_Savoy_, July 1896)
I
A stampede of huddled sheep, wildly scampering over the slaty shingle,
emerged from the leaden mist that muffled the fell-top, and a shrill
shepherd's whistle broke the damp stillness of the air. And presently a
man's figure appeared, following the sheep down the hillside. He halted
a moment to whistle curtly to his two dogs, who, laying back their ears,
chased the sheep at top speed beyond the brow; then, his hands deep in
his pockets, he strode vigorously forward. A streak of white smoke from
a toiling train was creeping silently across the distance: the great,
grey, desolate undulations of treeless country showed no other sign of
life.
The sheep hurried in single file along a tiny track worn threadbare amid
the brown, lumpy grass: and, as the man came round the mountain's
shoulder, a narrow valley opened out beneath him--a scanty patchwork of
green fields, and, here and there, a whitewashed farm, flanked by a dark
cluster of sheltering trees.
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