You never could guess, so I am going to tell you.
In the city near the town where the kind young men lived was a big market like (naming one in the neighbourhood). Every sort of thing was sold there, even live cows and sheep and hens. On Tuesday nights, the farmers used to come down from the hills with their sheep to sell, and drive them through the city streets into the pens, ready to sell on Wednesday morning; that was the day they sold them.
The sheep weren't used to the city noises and sights, and they always grew afraid and wild, and gave the farmers and the sheepdogs a great deal of trouble. They broke away and ran about, in everybody's way.
But just as the trouble was worst, about sunrise, the farmers would see a little silky, sharp-eared dog come trotting all alone down the road, into the midst of them.
And then!
In and out the little dog ran like the wind, round and about, always in the right place, driving—coaxing—pushing—making the sheep mind like a good school-teacher, and never frightening them, till they were all safely in! All the other dogs together could not do as much as the little strange dog. She was a perfect wonder. And no one knew whose dog she was or where she came from. The farmers grew to watch for her, every week, and they called her "the wee fell yin" which is Scots for "the little terror"; they used to say when they saw her coming, "There's the wee fell yin! Now we'll get them in."
Every farmer would have liked to keep her, but she let no one catch her. As soon as her work was done she was off and away like a fairy dog, no one knew where. Week after week this happened, and nobody knew who the little strange dog was.
But one day Wylie went to walk with her two masters, and they happened to meet some sheep farmers. The sheep farmers stopped short and stared at Wylie, and then they cried out, "Why, that's the dog! That's the wee fell yin!" And so it was. The little strange dog who helped with the sheep was Wylie.
Her masters, of course, didn't know what the farmers meant, till they were told all about what I have been telling you. But when they heard about the pretty strange dog who came to market all alone, they knew at last where Wylie went, every Tuesday night. And they loved her better than ever.
Wasn't it wise of the dear little dog to go and work for other people when her own work was taken away? I fancy she knew that the best people and the best dogs always work hard at something. Any way she did that same thing as long as she lived, and she was always just as gentle, and silky-haired, and loving as at first.