“Why, Will! surely you won’t think to leave me in this strait?  Why three of us are hardly able for the work, and how can I make head against this plague with only the poor sav—­with only Jacky, that is first-rate at light work till he gets to find it dull—­but can’t lift a sheep and fling her into the water, as the like of us can?”

“Well, ye see,” said Abner, doggedly, “I have got the offer of a place with Mr. Meredith, and he won’t wait for me more than a week.”

“He is a rich man, Will, and I am a poor one,” said George in a faint, expostulating tone.  Abner said nothing, but his face showed he had already considered this fact from his own point of view.

“He could spare you better than I can; but you are right to leave a falling house that you have helped to pull down.”

“I don’t want to go all in a moment.  I can stay a week till you get another.”

“A week! how can I get a shepherd in this wilderness at a week’s notice?  You talk like a fool.”

“Well, I can’t stay any longer.  You know there is no agreement at all between us, but I’ll stay a week to oblige you.”

“You’ll oblige me, will you?” said George, with a burst of indignation; “then oblige me by packing up your traps and taking your ugly face out of my sight before dinner-time this day.  Stay, my man, here are your wages up to twelve o’clock to-day, take ’em and out of my sight, you dirty rascal.  Let me meet misfortune with none but friends by my side.  Away with you, or I shall forget myself and dirty my hands with your mean carcass.”

The hireling slunk off, and as he slunk George stormed and thundered after him, “And wherever you may go, may sorrow and sickness—­no!”

George turned to Jacky, who sat coolly by, his eyes sparkling at the prospect of a row.  “Jacky!” said he, and then he seemed to choke, and could not say another word.

“Suppose I get the make-thunder, then you shoot him.”

“Shoot him! what for?”

“Too much bungality,* shoot him dead.  He let the sheep come that have my two fingers so on their backs;” here Jacky made a V with his middle and forefinger, “so he kill the other sheep—­yet still you not shoot him—­that so stupid I call.”

* Stupidity.

“Oh Jacky, hush! don’t you know me better than to think I would kill a man for killing my sheep.  Oh fie! oh fie!  No, Jacky, Heaven forbid I should do the man any harm; but when I think of what he has brought on my head, and then to skulk and leave me in my sore strait and trouble, me that never gave him ill language as most masters would; and then, Jacky, do you remember when he was sick how kind you and I were to him—­and now to leave us.  There, I must go into the house, and you come and call me out when that man is off the premises—­not before.”

At twelve o’clock selfish Abner started to walk thirty miles to Mr. Meredith’s.  Smarting under the sense of his contemptibleness and of the injury he was doing his kind, poor master, he shook his fist at the house and told Jacky he hoped the scab would rot the flock, and that done fall upon the bipeds, on his own black hide in particular.  Jacky only answered with his eye.  When the man was gone he called George.