keen, and there is little for the mind to
ruminate on.

About the middle of May there is a great
convergence of sheep towards a certain little
brook, that bisects our parish of Chicklebury. It
is a pleasant little rippling brook, dappled green
with plots of watercresses, strewn in places
with long waving tresses of weeds, and watched
here and there by stiff rows of alders, that are
drawn up like frightened soldiers—a little brook
not unknown to the great mallard, with the
green velvet neck, and not unpeopled by the
shy bull-headed trout— a brook that loses itself
in marshy snipy meadows, flowing eventually
under the walls of an old ruined Jacobite manor-
house, and thence out Heaven knows where,
into some distant region of Downshire, far
beyond Chicklebury knowledge. Just at the
point where the great road from Churchton to
Buyborough enters Chicklebury, the brook I
have before mentioned flows under a little stone
bridge of three arches, and enters the grounds
of Colonel Hanger. At the foot of this bridge,
just by the hedge that bounds the vicarage, is
the scene of the annual sheep-washing, for here
the water is kept in by a little stone dam, that
at once deepens and restrains it.

The first indication of the festivity consists
in the pitching of hurdles, some quiet afternoon
in May, or driving in of stakes by dint of crow-
bars and mallets, and in the formation of square
prison-like enclosures, which it needs no conjuror
to know are intended for sheep. A nondescript
sort of man, who all the year besides makes
beehives and garden-nets, is the proprietor of these
hurdles, is the manager of this sheep-washing,
and the contractor in the undertaking.

The real sheep-washing was not at all the
scene that I had pictured in my youth, in that
time when the sun shone brighter and the days
were longer and the flowers were sweeter than
they are now. I had fancied that it was held
under the spreading boughs of sun-proof elms
and beside a stream, white with water-lilies or
blue-bordered with forget-me-nots. I had pictured
glossy-haired red-cheeked countrymen
quaffing beer and shouting festive songs, while
the white flocks lay pastured around, or were
dragged into the clear stream by rejoicing boys.
I added to this, broad meadows, where the calm-
eyed kine fed knee-deep in the flowering grass;
where a pensive angler sat and watched the little
dragon-flies (whose bodies were like sapphire-
threads) flit round the golden dandelion-flowers;
or, with his tranquil and fishy-eye fixedmovelessly
upon his scarlet float. Such was my dream,
and I found it about as much like the reality as
the pictures of stage rustics in May-time are like
the real rustics. The real sheep-washing began
in quite another manner, and was conducted in
quite a different way.

As I once slept in a house, the lawns of which
borders on the Chicklebury brook, I have an
exact knowledge of the hour at which the sheep-
washing commences. In the curdling grey of
a May morning I was awoke by the hoarse
troubled bleating of multitudinous sheep, by the
querulous anger and assumed ferocity of countless
dogs, and by the cries and adjurations of
numberless shepherds. Even at that early hour
the whole road, far as you could see, was alive with
sheep, who, in a smoke cloud of advancing dust,
seemed to be steered by a brown-smocked shepherd,
whose voice you could hear far in the rear,
gesticulating, haranguing, and urging forward
his fleecy care.

In the deepest part of the brook, with his
back resting against a sort of stone dam that here
deepens and pens in the water, and standing in
a pulpit sort of box, is old Joe Macey, once
a gamekeeper, and now a Jack-of-all-trades.
Nearly opposite him, at some distance off in
another pulpit-like deal box, is Jem Bowbridge,
the manager of the whole speculation, and, on
the brook side, there is a large ground-plan of
hurdles with artful passages and little separate
parishes of enclosure to admit, to lead, and to
let out the unwashed sheep. In the uttermost
of these, is already the first instalment of
a flock come from the downs five miles off,
with a well-known red brand on their woolly
flanks. Here they huddle in stolid wonderment,
coughing exactly like old shepherds,
jangling their bruised bells or staring steadily and
vacantly at their old tormentor, the dog, who
is tied by a red handkerchief to an outside
hurdle, and is now, in a most aggravating and
uncalled-for way, making frantic and dislocating
leaps forward, whining and yelping in the fretful
assumption of an uncalled-for anger. His
master's crook and can are near him, under
a tree. The dog's pretence of zeal has a most
wholesome effect on his patient and long-suffering
congregation.

The farmer to whom the sheep belong,
mounted on a strong-boned hunter, not
backward when the hounds are out, is on the bridge
shouting his orders; for sheep are worth two
pounds each at least, and they are sometimes
drowned by careless or drunken washers.

At the other side of the brook, attendant on
the men in the little blue pulpits, stand two or
three shepherds with long poles in their hands,
to the bottom of which are fastened strong
cross-pieces of wood, so that they resemble
coarse hay-rakes in which the teeth have not yet
been cut.  These are used to stir up the sheep
in the water, to keep them under till they are
properly washed, and to steer them round from
one washer's pulpit to another's.

Now the spectators, or audience, begin to
assemble on the bridge, usually so quiet and
still. They come at daybreak and remain there
all day, as if fascinated at the gorgeousness and
unparalleled nature of the ceremony. There is
the butcher, in his light blue frock, that puffs
out pompously in the wind. He is seated on the
elastic swinging seat of his swift cart, and he
stops on the crown of the bridge and eyes the
sheep longingly, and with an almost pathetic
interest. He shouts at intervals loud-voiced
remarks on "its being good weather for the hai,"
or about "its beating up for another starm;"
then suddenly, in a violent way, without