Slowly she gathered up her things and took her way home, while the evening of blue and pearl fell around her, while the glow died on the fells, and Venus came out in a sky that was still too full of light to let any lesser stars appear.

She crossed the stepping stones, and in a river field on the farther side she came across an old shepherd, carrying a wounded ewe across his shoulders, and with his dog beside him.  At sight of him she paused in astonishment.  He was an old friend of hers, but he belonged to a village—­the village of Mainstairs—­some three miles away in the lowland toward Pengarth.  She had first come across him when sketching among some distant fells where he had been a shepherd for more than forty years.

The old man’s russet face, sharp-lined and strong, lit up as he saw her approaching.

“Why I thowt I med coom across yer!” he said smiling.  And he explained that he had been paying a visit to a married daughter under Naddle Fell, and had volunteered to carry an injured sheep down to a valley farm, whence it had strayed 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: