ight have a bit when he were gone"--the "bit"
amounting, if I remember rightly, to four hundred and eighty pounds.

Throughout these communings there was scarcely a trace of moral
reference in the usual senses of the term. One rule of life, and one
only, Snarley professed to have derived from his invisible monitor--that
"the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep." This rule, also, he
accepted in a strictly literal sense, and considered himself under
orders accordingly. Thus interpreted, it was for him the one rule which
summed up the essential content of the whole moral law.

I am not able to recall any notable act of heroism or self-sacrifice
performed by Snarley on behalf of his flock; but perhaps we shall not
err in regarding his whole life as such an act. When, in his old age,
physical suffering overtook him--the result of a lifetime of toil and
exposure to the elements--he bore it as a good soldier should bear his
wounds, sustained by the consciousness that pain such as his was the lot
of every shepherd "as did his duty by the sheep."

Nor am I aware that he displayed any emotional tenderness towards his
charges; and certainly, I may add, his personal appearance would not
have recommended him to a painter in search of a model for the Good
Shepherd of traditional art. In eliminating undesirable specimens from
the flock, Snarley was as ruthless as Nature; and when the butcher's man
drove them off to the shambles he would watch their departure without a
qualm. It was certainly said that he would never slaughter a sheep with
his own hands, not even when death was merciful; on the other hand, he
would sternly execute, by shooting, any dog that showed a tendency to
bite or worry the flock. There was one doubtful case of this kind which
Snarley told Mrs. Abel he had settled by reference to his monitor--the
verdict being adverse to the dog. The monitor was, indeed, his actual
Master--the captain of the ship whose orders were inviolable,--Farmer
Perryman being only the purser from whom he received his pay: a view of
the relationship which probably worked to Perryman's great advantage.

In short, whatever may have been Snarley's sins or virtues in other
directions, "the Shepherd" had little or nothing to do with them. The
burden which Snarley laid at his feet was the burden which had bent his
back, and crippled his limbs, and gnarled his hands, and furrowed his
broad brows during seventy years of hardship and toil. M