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  TALES FROM
  THE TELLING-HOUSE




[Illustration:

  TALES FROM THE
  TELLING-HOUSE


  BY

  R. D. BLACKMORE
  AUTHOR OF “LORNA DOONE,” ETC.


  1. SLAIN BY THE DOONES
  2. FRIDA; OR, THE LOVER’S LEAP
  3. GEORGE BOWRING
  4. CROCKER’S HOLE


  LONDON

  SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON & COMPANY
  LIMITED
  St. Dunstan’s House
  1896
]




PREFACE.


Sometimes of a night, when the spirit of a dream flits away for a waltz
with the shadow of a pen, over dreary moors and dark waters, I behold
an old man, with a keen profile, under a parson’s shovel hat, riding
a tall chestnut horse up the western <DW72> of Exmoor, followed by his
little grandson upon a shaggy and stuggy pony.

In the hazy folds of lower hills, some four or five miles behind them,
may be seen the ancient Parsonage, where the lawn is a russet sponge of
moss, and a stream tinkles under the dining-room floor, and the pious
rook, poised on the pulpit of his nest, reads a hoarse sermon to the
chimney-pots below. There is the home not of rooks alone, and parson,
and dogs that are scouring the moor; but also of the patches of hurry
we can see, and the bevies of bleating haste, converging by force of
men and dogs towards the final _rendezvous_, the autumnal muster of the
clans of wool.

For now the shrill piping of the northwest wind, and the browning
of furze and heather, and a scollop of snow upon Oare-oak Hill,
announce that the roving of soft green height, and the browsing of
sunny hollow, must be changed for the durance of hurdled quads, and
the monotonous munch of turnips. The joy of a scurry from the shadow
of a cloud, the glory of a rally with a hundred heads in line, the
pleasure of polishing a coign of rock, the bliss of beholding flat
nose, brown eyes, and fringy forehead, approaching round a corner for
a sheepish talk, these and every other jollity of freedom--what is
now become of them? Gone! Like a midsummer dream, or the vision of a
blue sky, pastured--to match the green hill--with white forms floating
peacefully; a sky, where no dog can be, much less a man, only the
fleeces of the gentle flock of heaven. Lackadaisy, and well-a-day! How
many of you will be woolly ghosts like them, before you are two months
older!

My grandfather knows what fine mutton is, though his grandson indites
of it by memory alone. “Ha, ha!” shouts the happier age, amid the
bleating turmoil, the yelping of dogs, and the sprawling of shepherds;
“John Fry, put your eye on that wether, the one with his J. B. upside
down, we’ll have a cut out of him on Sunday week, please God. Why, you
stupid fellow, you don’t even know a B yet! That is Farmer Passmore’s
mark you have got hold of. Two stomachs to a B; will you never
understand? Just look at what you’re doing! Here come James Bowden’s
and he has got a lot of ours! _Shep_ is getting stupid, and deaf as a
post. _Watch_ is worth ten of him. Good dog, good dog! You won’t let
your master be cheated. How many of ours, John Fry? Quick now! You can
tell, if you can’t read; and I can read quicker than I can tell.”

“Dree score, and vower Maister; ‘cardin’ to my rackonin’. Dree score
and zax it waz as us toorned out, zeventh of June, God knows it waz.
Wan us killed, long of harvest-taime; and wan tummled into bog-hole,
across yanner to Mole’s Chimmers.”

“But,” says the little chap on the shaggy pony, “John Fry, where are
the four that ought to have R. D. B. on them? You promised me, on the
blade of your knife, before I went to school again, that my two lambs
should have their children marked the same as they were.”

John turns redder than his own sheep’s-redding. He knows that he has
been caught out in a thumping lie, and although that happens to him
almost every day, his conscience has a pure complexion still. “’Twaz
along of the rains as wasshed ’un out.” In vain has he scratched his
head for a finer lie.

“Grandfather, you know that I had two lambs, and you let me put
R. D. B. on them with both my hands, after the shearing-time last year,
and