Alfred Ollivant

“ And not for a moment did that young man surmise whence his father came when, on the night in question, M'Adam returned to the Grange, chuckling to himself. David was growing of late accustomed to these fits of silent, unprovoked merriment; and when his father began giggling and muttering to Red Wull, at first he paid no heed.
“He! he! Wullie. Aiblins we'll beat him yet. There's many a slip twixt Cup and lip—eh, Wullie, he! he!” And he made allusion to the flourishing of the wicked and their fall; ending always with the same refrain: “He! he! Wullie. Aiblins we'll beat him yet.” ”

“ In matters of the subtlest handling, where to act anything except indifference was to lose, with sheep restless, fearful forebodings hymned to them by the wind, panic hovering unseen above them, when an ill-considered movement spelt catastrophe—then was Owd Bob o' Kenmuir incomparable.
Men still tell how, when the squire's new thrashing-machine ran amuck in Grammoch-town, and for some minutes the market square was a turbulent sea of blaspheming men, yelping dogs, and stampeding sheep, only one flock stood calm as a mill-pond by the bull-ring, watching the riot with almost indifference. ”

“ At last the Black Killer had visited Kenmuir.
“I guessed as much,” said the Master, standing over the mangled body. “Well, it's the worst night's work ever the Killer done. I reck'n Th' Owd Un come on him while he was at it; and then they fought. And, ma word! it munn ha' bin a fight too.” For all around were traces of that terrible struggle: the earth torn up and tossed, bracken uprooted, and throughout little dabs of wool and tufts of tawny hair, mingling with dark-stained iron-gray wisps.
James Moore walked slowly over the battlefield, stooping down as though he were gleaning. ”

“ Rounding the first flag, one bright-eyed wether made a dash for the open. He was quick; but the gray dog was quicker: a splendid recover, and a sound like a sob from the watchers on the hill.
Down the slope they came for the gap in the wall. A little below the opening, James Moore took his stand to stop and turn them; while a distance behind his sheep loitered Owd Bob, seeming to follow rather than drive, yet watchful of every movement and anticipating it. On he came, one eye on his master, the other on his sheep; never hurrying them, never flurrying them, yet bringing them rapidly along. ”

“ Adam M'Adam and his Red Wull, face to face; dead, not divided; each, save for the other, alone. The dog, his saturnine expression glazed and ghastly in the fixedness of death, propped up against that humpbacked boulder beneath which, a while before, the Black Killer had dreed his weird; and, close by, his master lying on his back, his dim dead eyes staring up at the heaven, one hand still clasping a crumpled photograph; the weary body at rest at last, the mocking face—mocking no longer—alight with a whole-souled, transfiguring happiness. ”

“ To little M 'Adam, standing with his back to the crowd, that storm of cheering came as the first announcement of defeat.
A wintry smile, like the sun over a March sea, crept across his face.
“We might a kent it, Wullie,” he muttered, soft and low. The tension loosed, the battle lost, the little man almost broke down. There were red dabs of color in his face; his eyes were big; his lips pitifully quivering; he was near to sobbing.
An old man—utterly alone he had staked his all on a throw—and lost. ”

“ M'ADAM never forgave his son. After the scene on the evening of the funeral there could be no alternative but war for all time. The little man had attempted to humble himself, and been rejected; and the bitterness of defeat, when he had deserved victory, rankled like a poisoned barb in his bosom.
Yet the heat of his indignation was directed not against David, but against the Master of Kenmuir. To the influence and agency of James Moore he attributed his discomfiture, and bore himself accordingly. In public or in private, in tap-room or market, he never wearied of abusing his enemy. ”

“ All that day M'Adam sat in his kitchen, drinking, muttering, hatching revenge.
“Curse it, Wullie! curse it! The time's slippin'—slippin'—slippin'! Thursday next—but three days mair! and I haena the proof—I haena the proof!”—and he rocked to and fro, biting his nails in the agony of his impotence.
All day long he never moved. Long after sunset he sat on; long after dark had eliminated the features of the room.
“They're all agin us, Wullie. It's you and I alane, lad. M'Adam's to be beat somehow, onyhow; and Moore's to win. ”

“ That insistent bell brought the scene surging back to him: the dismal day; the drizzle; the few mourners; little David decked out in black, his fair hair contrasting with his gloomy clothes, his face swollen with weeping; the Dale hushed, it seemed in death, save for the tolling of the bell; and his love had left him and gone to the happy land the hymn-books talk of.
Red Wull, who had been watching him uneasily, now came up and shoved his muzzle into his master's hand. The cold touch brought the little man back to earth. ”

“ And the lad was growing up the very antithesis of his father. Big and hearty, with never an ache or ill in the whole of his sturdy young body; of frank, open countenance; while even his speech was slow and burring like any Dale-bred boy's. And the fact of it all, and that the lad was palpably more Englishman than Scot—ay, and gloried in it—exasperated the little man, a patriot before everything, to blows. While, on top of it, David evinced an amazing pertness fit to have tried a better man than Adam M'Adam. ”

“ And that was David's aim—to escape attention. It was only his cunning at this game of evasion that saved him a thrashing.
The little man seemed devoid of all natural affection for his son. He lavished the whole fondness of which his small nature appeared capable on the Tailless Tyke, for so the Dalesmen called Red Wull. And the dog he treated with a careful tenderness that made David smile bitterly.
The little man and his dog were as alike morally as physically they were contrasted. Each owed a grudge against the world and was determined to pay it. ”

“ Rasper beneath him now; three at his throat; two at his ears; a crowd on flanks and body.
The Terror of the Border was down at last!
“Wullie, ma Wullie!” screamed M'Adam, bounding down the slope a crook's length in front of the rest. “Wullie! Wullie! to me!”
At the shrill cry the huddle below was convulsed. It heaved and swelled and dragged to and fro, like the sea lashed into life by some dying leviathan.
A gigantic figure, tawny and red, fought its way to the surface. A great tossing head, bloody past recognition, flung out from the ruck. ”

“ The mob came lumbering down the slope like one man, thundering their imprecations on a thousand throats. They looked dangerous, and their wrath was stimulated by the knot of angry Dalesmen who led the van. There was more than one white face among the women at the top of the slope as they watched the crowd blundering blindly down the hill. There were more men than Parson Leggy, the squire, James Moore, and the local constables in the thick of it all, striving frantically with voice and gesture, ay, and stick too, to stem the advance. ”

“ Sam'l was half up the wheel of the Kenmuir wagon; every man was on his toes; ladies were standing in their carriages; even Jim Mason's face flushed with momentary excitement.
The sheep were tearing along the hillside, all together, like a white scud. After them, galloping like a Waterloo winner, raced Red Wull. And last of all, leaping over the ground like a demoniac, making not for the two flags, but the plank-bridge, the white-haired figure of M'Adam.
“He's beat! The Killer's beat!” roared a strident voice.
“M'Adam wins! Five to four M'Adam! I lay agin Owd Bob!” ”

“ There was hardly a man in the land, from Langholm How to the market-cross in Grammoch-town, but had at one time known its sting, endured it in silence—for they are slow of speech, these men of the fells and meres—and was nursing his resentment till a day should bring that chance which always comes. And when at the Sylvester Arms, on one of those rare occasions when M'Adam was not present, Tammas summed up the little man in that historic phrase of his, “When he's drunk he's wi'lent, and when he bain't he's wicious,” there was an applause to gratify the blasé heart of even Tammas Thornton. ”

“ One after one the competitors ran their course and penned their sheep—there was no single failure. And all received their just meed of applause, save only Adam M'Adam's Red Wull.
Last of all, when Owd Bob trotted out to uphold his title, there went up such a shout as made Maggie's wan cheeks to blush with pleasure, and wee Anne to scream right lustily.
His was an incomparable exhibition. Sheep should be humored rather than hurried; coaxed, rather than coerced. And that sheep-dog has attained the summit of his art who subdues his own personality and leads his sheep in pretending to be led. ”

“ It is a country in which sheep are paramount; and every other Dalesman is engaged in that profession which is as old as Abel. And the talk of the men of the land is of wethers and gimmers, of tup-hoggs, ewe tegs in wool, and other things which are but fearsome names to you and me; and always of the doings or misdoings, the intelligence or stupidity, of their adjutants, the sheep-dogs.
Of all the Daleland, the country from the Black Water to Grammoch Pike is the wildest. Above the tiny stone-built village of Wastrel-dale the Muir Pike nods its massive head. ”

“ And this one good thing must be allowed of Adam M'Adam: that, if there was only one woman of whom he was ever known to speak well, there was also only one, in the whole course of his life, against whom he ever insinuated evil—and that was years afterward, when men said his brain was sapped. Flouts and jeers he had for every man, but a woman, good or bad, was sacred to him. For the sex that had given him his mother and his wife he had that sentiment of tender reverence which, if a man still preserve, he cannot be altogether bad. As he turned into the house he looked back at Red Wull. ”

“ Once they halted for a moment, finding a miserable shelter in a crevice of the rock.
“It's a Black Killer's night,” panted the Master. “I reck'n he's oot.”
“Ay,” the boy gasped, “reck'n he is.” Up and up they climbed through the blackness, blind and buffeted. The eternal thunder of the rain was all about them; the clamor of the gale above; and far beneath, the roar of angry waters.
Once, in a lull in the storm, the Master turned and looked back into the blackness along the path they had come. ”

“ Such a laughable spectacle he made, that martial mite, standing at bay with bristles up and teeth bared, that even James Moore smiled.
“Ma word! Ha' yo' brought his muzzle, man?” cried old Tammas, the humorist; and, turning, climbed all in a heat on to an upturned bucket that stood by. Whereat the puppy, emboldened by his foe's retreat, advanced savagely to the attack, buzzing round the slippery pail like a wasp on a windowpane, in a vain attempt to reach the old man. ”

“ The wind had dropped suddenly as it had risen; the little man on the mound had ceased to chuckle; Andrew's sobs were hushed; and in the background the huddled flock edged closer. The world hung balanced on the pinpoint of the moment. Every eye was in the one direction.
With dull, uncomprehending gaze James Moore stared as bidden. There was the gray dog naked in the moonlight, heedless still of any witnesses; there the murdered sheep, lying within and without that distorted shade ”

“ Long Kirby selected a small man in the crowd, and bashed his hat down over his eyes. While Tammas, Rob Saunderson, Tupper, Hoppin, Londesley, and the rest joined hands and went raving round like so many giddy girls.
Of them all, however, none was so uproarious in the mad heat of his enthusiasm as David M'Adam. He stood in the Kenmuir wagon beside Maggie, a conspicuous figure above the crowd, as he roared in hoarse ecstasy:
“Weel done, oor Bob! Weel done, Mr. Moore! Yo've knocked him! Knock him agin! Owd Bob o' Kenmuir! Moore! Moore o' Kenmuir! Hip! Hip!” ”