hat I longed to sleep.

And I suppose that I should have done so, and thereby met my death
shortly, but for a thing that roused me in an instant, and set the
warm blood coursing through me again.

There came a rustling in the undergrowth of the hillside below me,
and that was the most homely sound that I had heard since the wild
geese flew over me seaward with swish and whistle of broad wings
and call that I knew well. The silence of the great brown owls that
circled swiftly over me now and then was uncanny.

The rustling drew nearer, and then out into the open place under
the tall bare tree trunks where I stood trotted a grey beast that
was surely a shepherd's dog, for he stayed and looked back and
whined a little as if his master must be waited for. I thought that
I could hear the cracking of more branches once farther down the
hill.

Then I called to the dog, knowing that he and the shepherd would
not be far apart, and at the call the dog turned quickly toward me
and leaped back a yard, cowering a little with drooping tail. So I
called him again, and more loudly.

"Hither, lad! Hither, good dog!"

But the beast backed yet more from me, and I saw the dull gleam of
yellow teeth and heard him snarl as he did so, and then he growled
fiercely, so that I thought him sorely ill-tempered. But I had no
fear of dogs, and I called him again cheerily, and at that he sank
on his haunches and set back his head and howled and yelled as I
had never heard any dog give tongue before. And presently from a
long way off I heard the like howls, as if all the dogs of some
village answered him, and I thought their tongue was strange also.

Then came the shout of a man, even as I expected, and there was the
noise of one who tears his way through briers and brambles in
haste; but at that shout the dog turned and fled like a grey shadow
into the farther thickets, and was gone.

"Who calls?" one said loudly, and from the hillside climbed hastily
into the open a tall man, bearded and strong, and with a
pleasant-looking, anxious face. He was dressed in leather like our
shepherds, and like them carried but quarterstaff and seax for
weapons. I suppose that I was in some shadow, for at first he did
not see me.

"Surely I heard a child's voice," he said out loud--"or was it some
pixy playing with the grey beast of the wood?"

"Here I am," I cried, running to him; "take me home, shepherd, for
I think that I am lost."

He caught me up i