Irresolute Catherine

IRRESOLUTE CATHERINE
IRRESOLUTE CATHERINE
BY VIOLET JACOB
(MRS. ARTHUR JACOB)
AUTHOR OF “THE SHEEPSTEALERS,” “AYTHAN WARING,” ETC.
LONDON JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W. 1908
COPYRIGHT, 1908, IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.



A DULL patter of sheep’s hurrying feet came from behind a small knoll that jutted into the track along the mountain. The level plateau was wide and smooth below the towering slopes, and the threads of water crossing it at intervals had laid the underlying rock bare. As the sound neared, a travelling flock came round the knoll, herded thickly together and running before a man on horseback like clouds scudding before a gale. Forty pairs of light-coloured eyes, with their clear black bar of pupil, stared limpidly into space, and the backs of the flock bobbed and heaved as the hundred and sixty little cloven hoofs set their mark on the earthy places over which they passed.
Heber Moorhouse, pressing hard on their heels, shouted now and again, swinging the rope’s end he carried and leaning far out of his saddle as he drove the stragglers in. The rough-coated, weedy-looking pony under him cantered on, stubborn in face and obedient in limb to the rider’s hand and balance. ‘Black Heber’ could bring in his sheep as easily without his dog as with him.