on his way home.

They stopped to talk while he rested a few minutes, under his burden,
propped against a rock. Lydia asked him after a sick grand-daughter. Her
question showed knowledge--no perfunctory kindness.

He shook his head sadly, and her grave, soft look, as she fell silent a
little, beside him, said more than words.

"Anything been done to your cottage?" she asked him presently.

"Noa--nowt."

"Nor to the other houses?"

"Naethin'."

Her brows frowned.

"Horrible!" she said under her breath. But they did not pursue the
subject. Instead the old man broke out in praise of the "won'erful 'cute"
sheep dog beside him, and in the story of the accident which had slightly
lamed the ewe he was carrying. Lydia's vivacious listening, her laugh,
her comments, expressed--unconsciously--with just a touch of Cumbria
dialect, showed them natural comrades. Some deeply human gift, some
spontaneity in the girl, answered to the racy simplicity of the old man.

"Tell me once more"--she said, as she rose from her seat upon a fallen
tree, and prepared to go on her way--"those counting words you told me
last week. I tried to tell them to my mother--but I couldn't remember
them all. They made us laugh so."

"Aye, they're the owd words," said the shepherd complacently. "We doan't
use 'em now. But my feyther minds how his feyther used allus to count by
'em."

And he began the catalogue of those ancient numerals by which the
northern dalesman of a hundred years ago were still accustomed to reckon
their sheep, words that go back to the very infancy of man.

"Yan--tyan--tethera--methera--pimp;
sethera--lethera--hovera--dovera--dick."

Lydia's face dissolved in laughter--and when the old man delighting in
her amusement went on to the compounds of ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen,
and the rest:

"Yan-a-dick--tyan-a-dick--tethera-a-dick--methera-a-dick--bumfit."

At "bumfit" (fifteen) they both rocked with merriment, the old man
carried away by the infection of hers.

"Go on," said Lydia--the tears of laughter in her eyes--"up to twenty,
and then hear me say them."

"Yan-a-bumfit--tyan-a-bumfit--tethera-a-bumfit--methera-a-bumfit--giggot"
(twenty).

"Giggot" set them both off again--and then Lydia--stumbling, laughing,
and often corrected, said her lesson.

By the time she was fairly perfect, and the old man had straightened
himself again under his load--a veritable "good shepherd," glorified by
the evening light--they