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‘“Come in—come in, John!” called the old farmer, as our clog-irons rang on the paved fold. “What, Jimmy! is thoo gaen [going] with t’ sheep?”

‘“Ay!” I said.

‘“Well, come on and have some breakfast wi’ us; we’re just sitting down.”

‘But I was glad John Todd said nay, for the word “breakfast” put me by it [made me disinclined]. You’ll understand what it is for a lad leaving his home-dale for the first time. We shepherds think a lot of home, though it means cold flagged floors, rough-beamed dark rooms, and leaking roofs, with whitewashed cottage walls, and maybe a straggly stick-heap outside.

‘Donald came with us, and showed us the batch of his sheep we were to take.

‘“They’ll be a bit bad to manage, maybe, till you get out of the sound of the lambs,” said he. “Here, Toss, Nell, get away by” [pass beyond the sheep].

‘In a minute the dogs had driven the tiny flock out upon the dale-road, and there they were restlessly moving back and forward, waiting for us to commence our long drive.

‘“Noo, Jimmy,” said the old man, pressing the first crown piece of my own I had ever possessed into my hand, “mind thoo does as John bids thee. I remember thy father’s first droving; it was frae here into Scotland. It’s a lang while sen.”