"How strong you must be! I should have thought it would have required two or three men to lift those stones."
"Oh, it's easy enough, as easy as—counting sheep when you know how."
She laughed.
"But you must be very wet," she said, glancing at the water as it dripped from his clothes.
"Oh, it's all in the day's work," he said, cheerfully, more than cheerfully, happily. "Now for the steers."
"They're in the dale," she said; and she looked at him as she spoke with a new interest, with the interest a woman feels in the presence of her master, of the man who can move mountains.
He shook the water from him and rode at her side more cheerfully than he had done hitherto, for he had, so to speak, proved his helpfulness. He might be an idiot, but he could lift weir stones into their place.
"There they are," she said. "And, oh, dear! One of them has got loose.
There ought to be fourteen and there are only thirteen!"
"Good heavens! You must have eyes like a hawk's"
She laughed. "Oh, no; I'm used to it, that is all. Now, where can it be? I thought all the fences were mended. I must find it!"