In how great a measure the luck of Windlecombe or any sheep-farm depends on the foresight and tender care of the shepherd, was well brought home to me as, in the first ghostly light of morning, something like a crisis came to vary the monotonous round of our task. I had dozed off as I sat in my corner, and woke to find grey dawn picking out the tops of the hills, and George away on his unending business. Presently, through the little window at my side, I saw him coming back over the rimy grass, his coat bulged out with the usual burden. He set the lamb down on the straw by the fire. Limp and lifeless it looked, and past all aid; but George fell patiently to work swabbing it. As he worked, he talked.
‘’Tis White-Eye agen—a fine yow, but a onaccountable bad mother, ’a be, surelye. Purty nigh lost her lamb laast season, an’ now agen ’tis ne’ersome-matter wi’ un. Wunt gie suck. Butts th’ little un away, ’a do. That, an’ th’ could, ’tis. Terr’ble hard put to ’t, I wur, laast time, to save un! An’ this—well: if ’a cooms round, ’twill be a miracle—’
He stopped to fetch his breath, then set to more vigorously than ever.
‘Lorsh! I do b’lieve! . . . Ay! I’ll do ’t!—better ’n a score o’ dead uns, ’a be, a’ready. Now, shaap wi’ th’ bottle!’
But the wretched mute morsel of woolliness was too weak to suck. And then George Artlett did what I had never seen done before.
‘Well, well!’ he said confidently, ‘we must try th’ ould-fangled way wi’ un!’ He took a gulp of the warm milk, and bringing the lamb’s mouth to his own, tenderly fed it. Again and again this was done, until life began to flicker up strong once more in the little creature’s body.
‘But mind ye!’ said George, as presently he stood looking down on the resuscitated lamb, and regaling himself with its pitiful bleating, ‘No more o’ White-Eye! Off to Findon Fair ’a goos wi’ th’ draught-sheep next May, sure as she’s alive!’
THE charm of Sussex woods, though you may frequent them at all times in and out of season, is that they are never the same woods from year to year. The great trees, indeed, keep their old familiar forms and stations, but the undergrowth of hazel, ash, larch, or silver-birch is periodically cleared away. This year, a certain hillside or deep hollow may be hidden under a thicket of growth impenetrable not only to the casual wanderer, but to the very sunlight itself; and next year the wood-cutters may have swept it clean, leaving only the forest trees to cast their shadows over a sunny wilderness that your eyes, though you have journeyed this way scores of times, have never yet beheld. Clearings wherein the children gathered primroses by the thousand one spring, are overgrown and all but impassable the next. The very paths and waggon-ways change their direction, as the woodmen vary the scene of their labours from year to year. And in the track of the copse-cutters, arise all manner of new plants; new birds come to nest; new sights and sounds throng about the way at every turn—so, in nearly all seasons, a strange new land is brought to your very feet, in the midst of things familiar, maybe, for a score of years.