ving plenty of tunes, for a good while I
came on as well as could be expected, as men say of their wives. But,
unfortunately for me, Hector found out that I attended church every
Sunday, and though I had him always closed up carefully at home, he
rarely failed in making his appearance in church at some time of the
day. Whenever I saw him a tremor came over my spirits, for I well knew
what the issue would be. The moment that he heard my voice strike up
the psalm 'with might and majesty,' then did he fall in with such
overpowering vehemence, that he and I seldom got any to join in the
music but our two selves. The shepherds hid their heads, and laid them
down on the backs of their seats rowed in their plaids, and the lasses
looked down to the ground and laughed till their faces grew red. I
despised to _stick_ the tune, and therefore was obliged to carry on in
spite of the obstreperous accompaniment; but I was, time after time,
so completely put out of all countenance with the brute, that I was
obliged to give up my office in disgust, and leave the parish once
more to their old friend, St. Paul.

"Hector was quite incapable of performing the same feats among sheep
that his father did; but, as far as his judgment served him, he was a
docile and obliging creature. He had one singular quality, of keeping
true to the charge to which he was set. If we had been shearing, or
sorting sheep in any way, when a division was turned out and Hector
got the word to attend to them, he would have done it pleasantly for
a whole day without the least symptom of weariness. No noise or hurry
about the fold, which brings every other dog from his business, had
the least effect on Hector, save that it made him a little troublesome
on his own charge, and set him a-running round and round them, turning
them in at corners, from a sort of impatience to be employed as well
as his baying neighbours at the fold. Whenever old Sirrah found
himself hard set in commanding wild sheep on steep ground, where they
are worst to manage, he never failed, without any hint to the purpose,
to throw himself wide in below them, and lay their faces to the hill,
by which means he got the command of them in a minute. I never could
make Hector comprehend this advantage with all my art, although his
father found it out entirely of himself. The former would turn or wear
sheep no other way but on the hill above them; and, though very good
at it, he gave both them and himself