Produced by Paul Haxo with special thanks to the University
of California, Stanford University, the Internet Archive,
the HathiTrust Digital Library, and Google.
The Sheep-Stealers
New 6s. Novels
DONOVAN PASHA
BY GILBERT PARKER
CAPTAIN MACKLIN
BY RICHARD HARDING DAVIS
IF I WERE KING
BY JUSTIN HUNTLY MCCARTHY
THE MYSTERY OF THE SEA
BY BRAM STOKER
MOTHER EARTH
BY FRANCES HARROD
THE WINDS OF THE WORLD
BY MILLICENT SUTHERLAND
THE STORY OF EDEN
BY DOLF WYLLARDE
THE ASSASSINS
BY N. M. MEAKIN
NEXT TO THE GROUND
BY MARTHA MCCULLOCH-WILLIAMS
BY BREAD ALONE
BY I. K. FRIEDMAN
LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN
21 Bedford Street, W.C.
The Sheep-Stealers
By
Violet Jacob
(Mrs. Arthur Jacob)
London
William Heinemann
1902
_First Edition, August_ 1902
_Second Impression, September_ 1902
_All rights reserved_
_This Edition enjoys copyright in all countries signatory to the Berne
Treaty, and is not to be imported into the United States of America_
_To my Mother_
CONTENTS
Book I
Chapter Page
I. The Two Communities 3
II. Rhys 8
III. The Dipping-Pool 19
IV. At the Yew-Stump and After 29
V. Rebecca 40
VI. A Dead Man and a Live Coward 51
VII. To Abergavenny 59
VIII. Master and Man 66
IX. Two Meetings 76
X. Forget-me-nots 83
XI. The Brecon Coach 92
XII. George's Business 102
XIII. The Seven Snow-Men 110
XIV. The Uses of a Cast Shoe 120
XV. The Beginning 134
XVI. In which George Proves to be but Human 147
XVII. The Sheep-Stealers Part Company 156
XVIII. Mrs. Walters Goes to Chapel 165
XIX. The Moth and the Candle 174
XX. The Pedlar's Stone 183
XXI. The Way of the Transgressor 192
XXII. A Bad Debt 201
Book II
XXIII. White Blossoms 213
XXIV. A Card House 223
XXV. Llangarth Fair 232
XXVI. Howlie and Llewellyn Understand Each Other 243
XXVII. Four Opinions 254
XXVIII. A Martyr 263
XXIX. The Half Loaf 271
XXX. Nannie Sees her Duty 278
XXXI. The Way to Paradise 286
XXXII. A Dark Lantern 293
XXXIII. A Bird in the Hand 302
XXXIV. The Pursuers 312
XXXV. New Year's Eve 325
XXXVI. The New Year 336
BOOK I
CHAPTER I
THE TWO COMMUNITIES
IN the earlier half of the nineteenth century, when most of the
travelling done by our grandfathers was done by road, and the
intercourse between districts by no means far apart was but small, a
tract of country lying at the foot of the Black Mountain, which rises
just inside the Welsh border, was as far behind the times of which I
speak, as though it had been a hundred miles from any town.
Where the Great Western engines now roar down the Wye valley, carrying
the traveller who makes his journey in spring through orchards full of
pink blossom, the roads then lay in peaceful and unsophisticated
quiet. Soon after leaving Hereford, the outline of the mountain might
be seen raising itself like an awakening giant, over green hedges and
rich meadowland from the midst of the verdure and cultivation.
Between its slopes and the somewhat oppressive luxuriance through
which the river ran, a band of country totally unlike either of these
in character, encircled the mountain's foot, and made a kind of
intermediate stage between the desolate grandeur of the Twmpa (as the
highest summit was called) and the parish of Crishowell with its
farmyards and hayfields far beneath. The lanes leading up from
Crishowell village were so steep that it was impossible for carts to
ascend them, and the sheep-grazing population which inhabited the hill
farms above, had to go up and down to the market-town of Llangarth,
either on foot or on ponies brought in from the mountain runs. The
"hill-people," as the slower-witted dwellers in the valley called
them, came seldom down except on market-days, when the observer mixing
in these weekly gatherings in Llangarth market-place, might
distinguish them as a leaner, harder race with a wider range of
expression, due possibly to their larger outlook on the natural world.
They were neither entirely mountain nor entirely valley bred, though
retaining something of each locality, and something of the struggle
between nature and civilization seemed to have entered into them,
giving them that strenuousness which all transition must bring with
it.
They lived, too, in the midst of what one might call a by-gone
element, for the fields and uplands round their homes were full of the
records of preceding generations. Strange graves scattered the
hill-sides, ancient dates were cut in the walls of their houses, names
identical with those on forgotten tombs might be found on
outbuildings, and, in the hedges of the perpendicular lanes, stones
stood here and there which tradition vaguely designated as
"murder-stones," showing where the roadside tragedies of earlier times
had taken place. Local history told, too, of bloody battles fought
round the spurs of the mountain in ancient British times, and, at one
spot, a mound, visible to the eye of archæology, marked the place
where three chieftains had been buried after one of those fights.
Perhaps it was this which had given the name of "The Red Field" to a
small farm at a short distance from the plateau. Imaginative people
finding themselves in that region of neither yesterday nor to-day
might have felt the crowding-in at every step of dead personalities,
past customs and passions, in fact, a close treading on their heels of
generations which had lain for years in their graves in Crishowell
churchyard, or in the burying-places beside the little Methodist
chapels.
An element of superstition which all this could not fail to bring with
it, stalked abroad through those misty fields and lonely pastures,
and, one can hardly wonder that at the time of which I am speaking, it
was a powerful factor in the lives of the illiterate shepherds and
even of the better-educated farmers who owned sheep-runs on the
mountain. Stories were extant of strange appearances seen by late
riders on the bridle-tracks, and certain places were passed, even by
daylight, with a great summoning-up of courage.
One of these shrines of horror was an innocent-looking spot called
"The Boiling Wells," in the middle of a green track stretching over
the Twmpa's shoulder, where a flat piece of slate rock jutted from the
turf, and three small springs of water bubbled eternally up through
the earth. Near this place two young farmers, returning at dusk from a
sheep-run, had had an experience which they and all the hill-people
were not quick to forget, for they had arrived breathless one evening
at the Red Field Farm to detail to an open-mouthed audience of
farm-labourers how they had been overtaken by a thunderstorm near the
Boiling Wells, and how, as they neared the water, the horses had
refused to pass it, wheeling round and flying from something visible
only to themselves. Then the two men had become aware of a man's
figure hovering in the dusk, and a luminous face had peered at one of
them from between his horse's ears. At sight of this they had fled as
fast as their terrified beasts could carry them, and, after galloping
wildly in the increasing darkness for some time, they had been brought
to a stand by finding themselves running against the fence which
divided Red Field Farm from the mountain land.
In fact, the tales of fear which grew around this and other places in
the neighbourhood were endless, though sceptics hinted that these
strange things happened oftener on market-days than on any others, and
that those who claimed to have seen more than their neighbours owed
their pretensions more to having been what was called "market-peart"
than to anything else. Still, the effect on the public mind was
disquieting, and, in winter evenings, it kept many inside their doors
or in the inspiriting vicinity of the farm buildings.
To the dwellers in Crishowell village, who were disinclined to
question anything, all these tales, as they came down to their ears
from the higher regions, were unmitigated horrors, to be accepted as
best might be and retailed at corners over pipes with much repetition
and comment, coloured here and there to suit the narrator's cast of
mind. Living in their bit of valley where wages were small, needs few,
and public-houses many, they had scant ideas beyond the round of
weekly work, which terminated, in many cases, on Saturday night in a
prolonged visit to some favoured inn, and a circuitous return to the
domestic hearth afterwards.
Sunday, indeed, brought to these unsophisticated labourers its veneer
of respectability. A bucket of water in the back garden, an inherited
Sunday coat, a virtuous resolve not to smoke in any part of the
churchyard in which the parson could see them, converted them from a
quarter to eleven till half-past twelve, noon, into a chastened
community which filed noisily into the battered pews of Crishowell
church, there to remain till the final "Amen" let them loose upon the
joys of a Sunday dinner in the family circle. After this, they might
cast from them the garments of righteousness and sit about on gates
with acquaintances to whom they apparently never spoke.
Though the hill-people descended into Crishowell, the Crishowell
people rarely went up among their neighbours; only the Methodists
among them journeyed upwards to attend the Chapels with which the
higher land was dotted. In out-of-the-way corners by the thickly
intersecting lanes these grim, square, unadorned little buildings were
to be found. The wayfarer, coming unexpectedly upon one as he turned
some sudden angle of his road, might pause to glance over the low wall
which divided its unkempt precincts from the public path, at the few
crooked tombstones rising amid a wilderness of coarse hemlock which
spread even to the Chapel door, imparting a forlorn effect to the
spot, and pervading the air with its rank smell. Many of these places
were falling into disrepair from disuse, as, in summer weather, the
meetings would often be held on the hill-side, where the short turf
would bear marks until the next heavy rain of iron-bound heels and
heavy feet which had trodden in a ring round the spot. When the wind
chanced to sit in the east, the sound of the hymns and psalms would
come down with a kind of wail, by no means unimpressive, though
somewhat prolonged and nasal, to the nearer parts of the valley, the
favourite themes of death and judgment to come seeming singularly
appropriate to the hard, fervent faces and the background of frowning
mountain from which they sounded.
If it was a narrow religion which had obtained such a grasp upon these
upland men and women, it was yet one from which they gained a great
deal that few other things could have taught, and virtues adapted to
their exposed life grew up among them, possibly in obedience to those
laws of supply and demand which are part of Nature's self. Children
reared in unyielding austerity, forced to sit meekly through hours of
eloquence against which their hearts rebelled, while their bodies
suffered in silence, groaned under their trials. But, when they had
crossed the threshold of grown-up life, the fruits of these
experiences would show in a dormant fund of endurance and tenacity,
submerged, no doubt, by the tide of every-day impressions, but apt to
re-appear in emergencies as a solid rock rises into view at low water.
Such were the two communities living close together on the borders of
two nations, nominally one since the middle ages, but, in reality,
only amalgamated down to a very few inches below the surface.