at once broad smiling in your face—­a land flowing with milk and every bush a thousand nosegays.  At the angle above-mentioned, which commanded a double view, a man was standing watching some object or objects not visible to his three companions; they were working some yards lower down by the side of a rivulet that brawled and bounded down the hill.  Every now and then an inquiry was shouted up to that individual, who was evidently a sort of scout or sentinel.  At last one of the men in the ravine came up and bade the scout go down.

“I’ll soon tell you whether we shall have to knock off work.”  And he turned the corner and disappeared.

He shaded both his eyes with his hands, for the sun was glaring.  About a mile off he saw two men coming slowly up by a zig-zag path toward the very point where he stood.  Presently the men stopped and examined the prospect, each in his own way.  The taller one took a wide survey of the low ground, and calling his companion to him appeared to point out to him some beauty or peculiarity of the region.  Our scout stepped back and called down to his companions, “Shepherds!”

He then strolled back to his post with no particular anxiety.  Arrived there his uneasiness seemed to revive.  The shorter of the two strangers had lagged behind his comrade, and the watcher observed, that he was carrying on a close and earnest inspection of the ground in detail.

He peered into the hollows and loitered in every ravine.  This gave singular offense to the keen eye that was now upon him.  Presently he was seen to stop and call his taller companion to him, and point with great earnestness first to something at their feet, then to the backbone of rocks; and it so happened by mere accident that his finger took nearly the direction of the very spot where the observer of all his movements stood.  The man started back out of sight and called in a low voice to his comrades,

“Come here.”

They came straggling up with troubled and lowering faces.  “Lie down and watch them,” said the leader.  The men stooped and crawled forward to some stunted bushes, behind which they lay down and watched in silence the unconscious pair who were now about two furlongs distant.  The shorter of the two still loitered behind his companion, and inspected the ground with particular interest.  The leader of the band, who went by the name of Black Will, muttered a curse upon his inquisitiveness.  The others assented all but one, a huge fellow whom the others addressed as Jem.  “Nonsense,” said Jem, “dozens pass this way and are none the wiser.”

“Ay,” replied Black Will, “with their noses in the air.  But that is a notice-taking fellow.  Look at him with his eyes forever on the rocks, or in the gullies, or—­there if he is not picking up a stone and breaking it!”

“Ha! ha!” laughed Jem incredulously, “how many thousand have picked up stones and broke them and all, and never known what we know.”