, with her fore feet planted against the slippery bank,
pushing back with all her strength, while Jimmy propelled from the
rear.

"Boys!" Dorothy's clear voice called across the stream. "_Do_ hurry!
She's been in long enough, now! Keep her head up, can't you, and
squeeze the wool _hard_! You're not _half_ washing! Oh, Reuby! thee'll
drown her! Keep her _head_ up!"

Another unlucky douse and another half-smothered bleat,--Dorothy
released the yearling and plunged to the rescue. "Go after that lamb,
Reuby!" she cried, with exasperation in her voice. Reuby followed the
yearling, which had disappeared over the orchard slope, upsetting an
obstacle in its path, which happened to be Jimmy. He was now wailing on
the bank, while Dorothy, with the ewe's nose tucked comfortably in the
bend of her arm, was parting and squeezing the fleece, with the water
swirling round her. Her stout arms ached, and her ears were stunned
with the incessant bleating; she counted with dismay the sheep still
waiting in the pen. "Oh, Jimmy! _do_ stop crying, or else go to the
house!"

"He'd better go after Reuby," said Sheppard Barton, who was now
Dorothy's sole dependence.

"Oh yes; do, Jimmy, that's a good boy. Tell him to let the yearling go,
and come back quick."

The water had run low that morning in Evesham's pond. He shut down the
mill, and strode up the hills, across lots, to raise the gate of the
lower Barton Pond, which had been heading up for his use. He passed the
corn-field where, a month before, he had seen pretty Dorothy Barton
dropping corn with her brothers. It made him ache to think of Dorothy,
with her feeble mother, the boys, as wild as preacher's sons
proverbially are, and the old farm running down on her hands; the
fences all needed mending, and there went Reuben Barton, now, careering
over the fields in chase of a stray yearling. His mother's house was
big, and lonely, and empty; and he flushed as he thought of the "one
ewe-lamb" he coveted, out of Friend Barton's rugged pastures. As he
raised the gate, and leaned to watch the water swirl and gurgle through
the "trunk," sucking the long weeds with it, and thickening with its
tumult the clear current of the stream, the sound of voices and
bleating of sheep came up from below. He had not the farming instincts
in his blood;--the distant bleating, the hot June sunshine and
cloudless sky, did not suggest to him sheep-washing;--but now came a
boy's voice shouting and a cry of di