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‘Why, it com into our flock three week since. Dosta know whar it belongs?’

‘It’s a gay way from here. Hesta seen Jimmy Green of Little Langdale about?’

‘He was here five minutes sen. But he can’t name it.’

‘I’ll fetch him;’ and off he went, to return in a minute with a long, lean man of the nervy hunting type. ‘Noo, Jim, dosta name it? It belongs to t’ priest at Seathwaite. Thoo’s handled many a yan [one] o’ his when we lived at Tarn Hall together.’

Here followed a technical description of the marks distinguishing the flock of the Vicar of that remote mountain parish, and the upshot was that Green agreed to take the sheep to Little Langdale, till such time as he could spare a day to climb the steep pass of Wrynose, and tramp the seven miles of rough path down the Duddon Valley to where the sheep’s owner lived. How had the sheep wandered so far away? I wondered; the point at which it had been detected was thirty full miles from its rightful home. My companion thought it possible that the ewe had rambled over the fell to some mountain road, and along this had followed in the track of some flock which was being driven from one dale to another. It was likely that one such happening might bring the ewe across all the enclosed ground between two commons, upon the second of which it had been captured.