It was a sad thing to have to write to Susan and tell her that after twenty months’ hard work he was just where he had been at first starting.  One day, as George was eating his homely dinner on his knee by the side of his principal flock, he suddenly heard a tremendous scrimmage mixed with loud, abusive epithets from Abner.  He started up, and there was Carlo pitching into a sheep who was trying to jam herself into the crowd to escape him.  Up runs one of the sheep-dogs growling, but instead of seizing Carlo, as George thought he would, what does he do but fall upon another sheep, and spite of all their evasions the two dogs drove the two sheep out of the flock and sent them pelting down the hill.  In one moment George was alongside Abner.

“Abner,” said he, “how came you to let strange sheep in among mine?”

“Never saw them till the dog pinned them.”

“You never saw them,” said George reproachfully.  “No, nor your dog either till my Carlo opened your eyes.  A pretty thing for a shepherd and his dog to be taught by a pointer.  Well,” said George, “you had eyes enough to see whose sheep they were.  Tell me that, if you please?”

Abner looked down.

“Why, Abner?”

“I’d as lieve bite off my tongue as tell you.

George looked uneasy and his face fell.

“A ‘V.’  Don’t ye take on,” said Abner.  “They couldn’t have been ten minutes among ours, and there were but two.  And don’t you blow me up, for such a thing might happen to the carefulest shepherd that ever was.”

“I won’t blow ye up, Will Abner,” said George.  “It is my luck not yours that has done this.  It was always so.  From a game of cricket upward I never had my neighbor’s luck.  If the flock are not tainted I’ll give you five pounds, and my purse is not so deep as some.  If they are, take your knife and drive it into my heart.  I’ll forgive you that as I do this.  Carlo! let me look at you.  See here, he is all over some stinking ointment.  It is off those sheep.  I knew it.  ’Twasn’t likely a pointer dog would be down on strange sheep like a shepherd’s dog by the sight.  ’Twas this stuff offended him.  Heaven’s will be done.”

“Let us hope the best, and not meet trouble half way.”

“Yes” said George feebly.  “Let us hope the best.”

“Don’t I hear that Thompson has an ointment that cures the red scab?”

“So they say.”

George whistled to his pony.  The pony came to him.  George did not treat him as we are apt to treat a horse—­like a riding machine.  He used to speak to him and caress him when he fed him and when he made his bed, and the horse followed him about like a dog.

In half an hour’s sharp riding they were at Thompson’s, an invaluable man that sold and bought animals, doctored animals, and kept a huge boiler in which bullocks were reduced to a few pounds of grease in a very few hours.

“You have an ointment that is good for the scab, sir?”