t! All right!' said Dan. Old Jim wheeled round, took his bone
carefully between his blunted teeth, and returned to the shadow of the
old barn, looking just like a wolf. The children went on. Two kestrels
hung bivvering and squealing above them. A gull flapped lazily along the
white edge of the cliffs. The curves of the Downs shook a little in the
heat, and so did Mr. Dudeney's distant head.

They walked toward it very slowly and found themselves staring into a
horse-shoe-shaped hollow a hundred feet deep, whose steep sides were
laced with tangled sheep-tracks. The flock grazed on the flat at the
bottom, under charge of Young Jim. Mr. Dudeney sat comfortably knitting
on the edge of the slope, his crook between his knees. They told him
what Old Jim had done.

'Ah, he thought you could see my head as soon as he did. The closeter
you be to the turf the more you see things. You look warm-like,' said
Mr. Dudeney.

'We be,' said Una, flopping down. '_And_ tired.'

'Set beside o' me here. The shadow'll begin to stretch out in a little
while, and a heat-shake o' wind will come up with it that'll overlay
your eyes like so much wool.'

'We don't want to sleep,' said Una indignantly; but she settled herself
as she spoke, in the first strip of early afternoon shade.

'O' course not. You come to talk with me same as your father used. _He_
didn't need no dog to guide him to Norton Pit.'

'Well, he belonged here,' said Dan, and laid himself down at length on
the turf.

'He did. And what beats me is why he went off to live among them messy
trees in the Weald, when he might ha' stayed here and looked all about
him. There's no profit to trees. They draw the lightning, and sheep
shelter under 'em, and _so_, like as not, you'll lose a half score ewes
struck dead in one storm. Tck! Your father knew that.'

'Trees aren't messy.' Una rose on her elbow. 'And what about firewood? I
don't like coal.'

'Eh? You lie a piece more up-hill and you'll lie more natural,' said
Mr. Dudeney, with his provoking deaf smile. 'Now press your face down
and smell to the turf. That's Southdown thyme which makes our Southdown
mutton beyond compare, and, my mother told me, 'twill cure anything
except broken necks, or hearts. I forget which.'

They sniffed, and somehow forgot to lift their cheeks from the soft
thymy cushions.

'You don't get nothing like that in the Weald. Watercress, maybe?' said
Mr. Dudeney.

'But we've water--brooks full of it--w