On one occasion, when rambling over the fells with a company of schoolfellows, a poor blind lamb ran bleating past them, a black cloud of ravens, crows, and owl-eagles flying about it.  The merciless birds had fallen upon the innocent creature as it lay sleeping under the shadow of a tree, had picked at its eyes and fed on them, and now, as the blood trickled in red beads down its nose, they croaked and cried and screamed to drive it to the edge of a precipice and then over to its death in the gulf beneath, there to feast on its carcass.  It was no easy thing to fend off the cruel birds when in sight of their prey, but, running and capturing the poor lamb, Ralph snatched it up in his arms at the peril of his own eyes, and swung a staff about his head to beat off the birds as they darted and plunged and shrieked about him.

It was natural that a boy like this should develop into the finest shepherd on the hills.  Ralph knew every path on the mountains, every shelter the sheep sought from wind and rain, every haunt of the fox.  At the shearing, at the washing, at the marking, his hand was among the best; and when the flocks had to be numbered as they rushed in thousands through the gate, he could count them, not by ones and twos, but by fours and sixes.  At the shearing feasts he was not above the pleasures of the country dance, the Ledder-te-spetch, as it was called, with its one, two, three—­heel and toe—­cut and shuffle.  And his strong voice, that was answered oftenest by the echo of the mountain cavern, was sometimes heard to troll out a snatch of a song at the village inn.  But Ralph, though having an inclination to convivial pleasures, was naturally of a serious, even of a solemn temperament.  He was a rude son of a rude country,—­rude of hand, often rude of tongue, untutored in the graces that give beauty to life.

By the time that Ralph had attained to the full maturity of his manhood, the struggles of King and Parliament were at their height.  The rumor of these struggles was long in reaching the city of Wythburn, and longer in being discussed and understood there; but, to everybody’s surprise, young Ralph Ray announced his intention of forthwith joining the Parliamentarian forces.  The extraordinary proposal seemed incredible; but Ralph’s mind was made up.  His father said nothing about his son’s intentions, good or bad.  The lad was of age; he might think for himself.  In his secret heart Angus liked the lad’s courage.  Ralph was “nane o’ yer feckless fowk.”  Ralph’s mother was sorely troubled; but just as she had yielded to his father’s will in the days that were long gone by, so she yielded now to his.  The intervening years had brought an added gentleness to her character; they had made mellower her dear face, now ruddy and round, though wrinkled.  Folks said she had looked happier and happier, and had talked less and less, as the time wore on.  It had become a saying in Wythburn that the dame of Shoulthwaite Moss was never seen without a smile, and never heard to say more than “God bless you!” The tears filled her eyes when her son came to kiss her on the morning when he left her home for the first time, but she wiped them away with her housewife’s apron, and dismissed him with her accustomed blessing.