The word loneliness gave me a good opening to broach the subject of our Sunday gatherings, and my suspicions of Jim's having been told of our visit were confirmed by the alacrity with which he said, "I have much pleasure in accepting your kind invitation, mum, if so be as I am not intruding."
"No, indeed Salter," F—— said; "you'd be very welcome, and you could always turn Judy into the paddock whilst we were having service."
Now if there was one thing dearer to Salter's heart than another, it was his little roan mare Judy: her excellent condition, and jaunty little hog-mane and tail, testified to her master's loving care. So it was all happily settled, and after paying a most unfashionably long visit to the lonely man, we rode away with many a farewell nod and smile. I may say here that Salter was one of the most regular of our congregation for more than two years, besides being a member of the book club. In time, its more sensible volumes utterly displaced the yellow paper rubbish in his but library, and I never can forget the poor man's emotion when he came to bid me good-bye.
At my request he made the rough little pen and ink sketches which are here given, and as he held my offered hand (not knowing quite what else to do with it) when I took leave of him after our last home-service, when my face was set towards England, he could not say a word. The great burly creature's heart must have been nearly as big as his body, and he seemed hardly to know that large tears were rolling down his sunburnt face and losing themselves in his bushy beard. I tried to be cheerful myself, but he kept repeating, "It is only natural you should be glad to go, yet it is very rough upon us." In vain I assured him I was not at all glad to go,—very, very sorry, in fact: all he would say was, "To England, home and beauty, in course any one would be pleased to return." I can't tell you what he meant, and he had no voice to waste on explanations; I only give poor dear Jim's valedictory sentences as they fell from his white and trembling lips.
Very different was Ned Palmer, the most diminutive and wiry of hill shepherds, with a tongue which seemed never tired, and a good humoured smile for every one. Ned used to try my gravity sorely by stepping up to me half a dozen times during the service, to find his place for him in his Prayer-book, and always saying aloud, "Thank you kindly, m'm."
Chapter IX: Another shepherd's hut.
To get to Ned's hut—which was not nearly so trim or comfortable as Salter's, and stood out in the midst of a vast plain covered with waving yellow tussocks,—we had to cross a low range of hills, and pick our way through nearly a mile of swampy ground on the other side. The sure-footed horses zig-zagged their way up the steep hill-side with astonishing ease, availing themselves here and there of a sheep track, for sheep are the best engineers in the world, and always hit off the safest and easiest line of country. I did not feel nervous going up the hill, although we must have appeared, had there been any one to look at us, more like flies on a wall than a couple of people on horse back, but when we came to the ridge and looked down on the descent beneath us, my heart fairly gave way.
Not a blade of grass, or a leaf of a shrub, was to be seen on all the steep slope, or rather precipice, for there was very little slope about it; nothing but grey loose shingle, which the first hoof-fall of the leading horse invariably sent slipping and sliding, in a perfect avalanche of rubble, down into the soft bright green morass beneath. Of all the bad "tracks" I encountered in my primitive rides, I really believe I suffered more real terror and anguish on that particular hill-side than on any other. My companion's conduct too, used to be heartless in the extreme. He let the reins fall loosely on his horse's neck, merely holding their extreme ends, settled himself comfortably in his saddle, leaning well back, and turning round laughingly to me, observed, "Aren't you coming?" "Oh, not there," I cried in true melo-dramatic tones of horror; but it was all in vain, F—— merely remarked "You have nothing to do but fancy you are sitting in an arm-chair at home, you are quite as safe." "What nonsense," I gasped. "I only wish I was at home: never, never will I come out riding again." All this time the leading horse was slowly and carefully edging himself down hill a few steps to the right, then a few to the left, just as he thought best, displacing tons of loose stone and even small rocks at every movement. Helen, nothing daunted, was eager to follow, and although she quivered with excitement at the noise, echoed back from the opposite hills, lost no time in preparing to descend. Her first movement sent such showers of rubble down upon F—— and his horse, that I really thought the latter would have been knocked off his legs. "If you could keep a little more to the right, so as to send the stones clear of me, I should be very grateful," shouted F——, who was actually near the bottom of the hill already, so sharp had been the angles of his horse's descent. I felt afraid of attempting to guide Helen, lest the least check should send us both head over heels into the quagmire below, and yet it seemed dreadful to cause the death of one's husband by rolling down cart loads of stones upon him. It could not have been more than five minutes before Helen and I stood side by side with Leo, on the only bit of firm ground at the edge of the morass. I believe I was as white as my pocket handkerchief; and if fright could turn a person's hair grey, I had been sufficiently alarmed to make myself eligible for any quantity of walnut pomade.
Fortunately the summer had proved rather a dry one, and the swamp was not so wet as it would have been after a heavy rain-fall. The horses stepped carefully from flax bushes to "nigger heads" (as the very old blackened grass stumps are called), resting hardly a moment anywhere, and avoiding all the most seductive looking spots. I thought my companion must have gone suddenly mad, when, a hawk rising up almost from beneath our horses' feet, he flung himself off his saddle and cried out, "A late hawk's nest, I declare!" And so it proved, for a little searching in a sheltered and tolerably dry spot revealed a couple of eggs, precisely like hens' eggs, until broken, when their delicate pale green inner membrane betrayed their dangerous origin. It is chiefly owing to this practice of laying in swamps that the various kinds of hawk increase and thrive as they do, for if it were possible to get at them, the shepherds would soon exterminate the sworn foe of their chickens and pigeons. They are also the great drawback to the introduction of pheasants and partridges, for the young birds have not a chance in the open against even a sparrow-hawk.