low. Chandrapal and
Snarley were left to themselves.

* * * * *

Late at night Chandrapal returned to the Rectory. He was more than
usually silent and absorbed. Of what had passed between him and Snarley
he said not a word; but, on bidding us good-night, he remarked to Mrs.
Abel, "The cycle of existence returns upon itself." And Snarley, on his
part, never spoke of the occurrence to any living soul. "The rest is
silence."

SHEPHERD TOLLER O' CLUN DOWNS

At the age of fifty or thereabouts Shepherd Toller went mad. After due
process he was handed over to the authorities and graduated as a pauper
lunatic. His madness was the outcome of solicitude, and it was not
surprising that, after a year amid the jovial company of the asylum,
Toller began to improve. At the end of the second year he was declared
to be cured, and discharged, much to his regret.

His first act on liberation was to recover his old dog, which had been
left in charge of a friend. Desiring to start life again where his
former insanity would be unknown, he made his way to Deadborough, the
village of his birth. Arrived there, after a forty miles' walk, he
refreshed himself with a glass of beer and a penn'orth of bread and
cheese, and proceeded at once to Farmer Ferryman in quest of work. The
farmer, who was, as usual, in want of labour, sent him to Snarley Bob to
"put the measure on him." Snarley's report was favourable. "He seemed a
bit queer, no doubt, and kept laughin' at nothin'; but I've knowed lots
o' queer people as had more sense than them as wasn't queer, and there's
no denyin' as he's knowledgeable in sheep." The result was that Toller
was forthwith appointed as an understudy to Snarley Bob.

Bob's estimate of the new-comer rose steadily day by day. "He had a
wonderful eye for points." "As good a sheep-doctor as ever lived."
"Wanted a bit of watchin', it was true, but had a head on his shoulders
for all that." "Knows how to keep his mouth shut." "Was backward in
breedin', but not for want o' sense--hadn't caught him young enough."
"Could ha' taught him anything, if he'd come twenty-five years back." In
due course, therefore, Toller was entrusted with great responsibilities.
He it was who, under Snarley's direction, presided over the generation,
birth, and early upbringing of the thrice-renowned "Thunderbolt."

So it went on for three years. At the end of that time Toller had an
accident. He fell through