“That I have, farmer.  Sold some to a neighbor of yours day before yesterday.”

“Who was that?”

“A newcomer.  Vesey is his name.”

George groaned.  “How do you use it, if you please?”

“Shear ’em close, rub the ointment well in, wash ’em every two days, and rub in again.”

“Give me a stone of it.”

“A stone of my ointment!  Well! you are the wisest man I have come across this year or two.  You shall have it, sir.”

George rode home with his purchase.

Abner turned up his nose at it, and was inclined to laugh at George’s fears.  But George said to himself, “I have Susan to think of as well as myself.  Besides,” said he a little bitterly, “I haven’t a grain of luck.  If I am to do any good I must be twice as prudent and thrice as industrious as my neighbors or I shall fall behind them.  Now, Abner, we’ll shear them close.”

“Shear them!  Why it is not two months since they were all sheared.”

“And then we will rub a little of this ointment into them.”

“What! before we see any sign of the scab among them?  I wouldn’t do that if they were mine.”

“No more would I if they were yours,” replied George almost fiercely.  “But they are not yours, Will Abner.  They are unlucky George’s.”

During the next three days four hundred sheep were clipped and anointed.  Jacky helped clip, but he would not wear gloves, and George would not let him handle the ointment without them, suspecting mercury.

At last George yielded to Abner’s remonstrances, and left off shearing and anointing.

Abner altered his opinion when one day he found a sheep rubbing like mad against a tree, and before noon half a dozen at the same game.  Those two wretched sheep had tainted the flock.

Abner hung his head when he came to George with this ill-omened news.  He expected a storm of reproaches.  But George was too deeply distressed for any petulances of anger.  “It is my fault,” said he, “I was the master, and I let my servant direct me.  My own heart told me what to do, yet I must listen to a fool and a hireling that cared not for the sheep.  How should he? they weren’t his, they were mine to lose and mine to save.  I had my choice, I took it, I lost them.  Call Jacky and let’s to work and save here and there one, if so be God shall be kinder to them than I have been.”

From that hour there was but little rest morning, noon or night.  It was nothing but an endless routine of anointing and washing, washing and anointing sheep.  To the credit of Mr. Thompson it must be told that of the four hundred who had been taken in time no single sheep died; but of the others a good many.  There are incompetent shepherds as well as incompetent statesmen and doctors, though not so many.  Abner was one of these.  An acute Australian shepherd would have seen the more subtle signs of this terrible disease a day or two before the patient sheep began to rub themselves with fury against the trees and against each other; but Abner did not; and George did not profess to have a minute knowledge of the animal, or why pay a shepherd?  When this Herculean labor and battle had gone on for about a week, Abner came to George, and with a hang-dog look begged him to look out for another shepherd.