At Love's Cost Part 24

She smiled.

"But where is number one?"

She spoke to Donald in a low voice, then the collie began to work the sheep up into a heap; Bess a.s.sisting with her sharp yap.

"Now they're ready," said Ida. "You must be quick."

Stafford began to count, but the sheep moved and the ones he had counted got mixed up with the others, and he began again and yet again, until he turned with a puzzled and furrowed brow.

"I can't count them," he said. "They won't keep still for a single moment."

She turned to him with a smile.

"There are fifty-two," she said.

"Do you mean to say that you've counted them already?" he exclaimed.

"Yes; I could have counted them twice over by this time. Now, begin again, and begin from the farthest row; and remember when you come to a black one. Keep your eye on that one and start again front him. It's quite easy when you know how." He began again.

"I make it forty-eight."

She shook her head and laughed.

"That would be four missing, and we should have to hunt for them. But they are all there. Try again." He tried--and made it fifty-six.

"Didn't I tell you that I was an idiot!" he said, in despair.

"Oh, you can't expect to learn the first time," she said, consolingly.

"It was weeks before I could do it; and I almost cried the first few times I tried: they would move just as I was finis.h.i.+ng."

"Oh, well, then I can hope to get it in time," he said. "Did it ever strike you that though we think ourselves jolly clever, that there are heaps of things which a workingman--the men we look down upon--can do which we couldn't accomplish if it were to save our lives. For instance, I couldn't make a horseshoe if my existence depended upon it, and yet it looks as easy as--"

--"Counting sheep," she finished, with a twinkle in her grey-blue eyes.

"Just so," he said, with a laugh. "Shall I have another try?"

"Oh, no; you'd be here all day; and we've got to see if the others are all right; but first I think we'd better go and look at the weir; Jason says that a stone has got washed down, and that means that when the autumn rains come the meadows would be flooded."

"All right: I'm ready," he said, with bright alacrity. "I'm enjoying this. I know now why you look so happy and contented. You're of some use in the world, and I--the rest of us--That's the weir?" he broke off to enquire, as they came in sight of a rude barrier of stones which partially checked the stream.

"That is it," she said. "And Jason is right. Some of the big stones have been washed down. What a nuisance! We shall have to get some men from Bryndermere to put them up again."

Stafford rode up to the weir and looked at it critically.

"Thank Heaven I haven't got to count the stones!" he said. "If you'll kindly hold my horse--he's not so well trained as yours, and would bolt, I'm afraid." He slipped from the saddle as he spoke, and she caught the reins.

"What are you going to do? she asked.

"I don't know yet," Stafford called back, as he waded into the river.

She held the horse and sat reposeful in the saddle and watched him with a smile upon her face. But it grew suddenly grave as she saw Stafford stoop and put his arms round one of the fallen stones; and she cried to him:

"Oh, you can't lift them; it's no use trying!"

Stafford apparently did not hear her, for, exerting all his strength, he lifted the big stone and gradually slid and hoisted it into its place. Then he attacked the other two, and with a still greater effort raised them into a line with their fellows.

Ida watched him as--well, as one watches some "strong man" going through his performance.

It was a well-nigh incredible feat, and she held her breath as one stone followed the other. It seemed to her incredible and impossible, because Stafford's figure was slight and graceful, and he performed the feat with the apparent ease which he had learnt in the 'varsity athletic sports.

The colour rose to her face and her heart beat quickly. There is one thing left for women to wors.h.i.+p; and they wors.h.i.+p it readily--and that is strength. Stafford could not count sheep--any woman could do that--but he could do what no woman could do: lift those great stones into their places.

So that, as he waded out of the river, she smiled _on_ him instead of _at_ him--which is a very different thing--as she said:

"How strong you must be! I should have thought it would have required two or three men to lift those stones."

"Oh, it's easy enough, as easy as--counting sheep when you know how."

She laughed.

"But you must be very wet," she said, glancing at the water as it dripped from his clothes.

"Oh, it's all in the day's work," he said, cheerfully, more than cheerfully, happily. "Now for the steers."

"They're in the dale," she said; and she looked at him as she spoke with a new interest, with the interest a woman feels in the presence of her master, of the man who can move mountains.

He shook the water from him and rode at her side more cheerfully than he had done hitherto, for he had, so to speak, proved his helpfulness.

He might be an idiot, but he could lift weir stones into their place.

"There they are," she said. "And, oh, dear! One of them has got loose.

There ought to be fourteen and there are only thirteen!"

"Good heavens! You must have eyes like a hawk's"

She laughed. "Oh, no; I'm used to it, that is all. Now, where can it be? I thought all the fences were mended. I must find it!"

"Stop!" he said. "At any rate, I can find a cow--bullock--steer. Let me go. You wait here."

He rode off as he spoke, and she pulled up the big chestnut and looked after him. Once more the question rose to perplex her: why had he come, why was he riding about the dale with her, counting sheep, wading in the stream, lifting weir stones, and herding cattle? It seemed to be so strange, so inexplicable. And as she followed him with her eyes, his grace and strength were impressed upon her, and she dwelt upon them dreamily. Were there many such men in the world of which she knew so little, or was he one alone, and unique? And how good, how pleasant it was to have him with her, to talk to her, to help her! She had often longed for a brother, and had pictured one like this, strong and handsome, with frank eyes and smiling lips--someone upon whom she could lean, to whom she could go when she was in trouble.

A shout awoke her from her reverie; and looking up she saw the missing steer forcing its way through a hedge on top of a bank. Stafford was riding after it at an easy canter and coming straight for the bank. The steer plunged through the hedge and floundered through the wide ditch, and Ida headed it and drove it towards the rest of the herd. Then she turned in her saddle to warn Stafford of the ditch; but as she turned he was close upon the bank, and she saw the big hunter rise for the leap.

A doubt as to how he would land rose in her mind, and she swung Rupert round; and as she did so, she saw the hunter crash through the hedge, stumble at the ditch, and fall, lurching forward, on its edge.

No man alive could have kept his seat, and Stafford came off like a stone thrown from a catapult, and lay, face downwards, in the long, wet gra.s.s.

Something like a hot iron shot through Ida's heart, and sent her face white, and she rode up to him and flung herself from Rupert and knelt beside the prostrate form.