As well tell poor Jep to fly as to scale a perpendicular wall, and that his tormenter knew. Oh! it was fun to him to hear the poor lad run about and rave, the echoes catching every sorrowful tone, and tossing them out to him, a legion of words. What a strange waywardness is in the half of us, to find amusement in that which is another's suffering! When at last master Ru let his prisoner out, with much ado, pretended or real, the sun was past its meridian, and the sheep--ah! the sheep--one, two, many of them were beyond the shepherd's tending and doctoring. "They must e'en die," said he before sundown, with tears in his eyes--and that night Jep wept in the dewy orchard, one hand in wee Margaret's, the other stroking Spottie, with a sore smarting back and the squire's angry dismissal making his heart equally sore and smarting. Master Ru received a reprimand, but then he was a spoilt only son, and a gentleman, while Jep was a poor lad, and should have stuck to duty--so said the squire. This escapade was but the beginning of troubles, for, as the winter deepened, Jep's father fell ill, and the squire frowned and fumed, and never spoke civilly to Jep when he called at the cottage, where the lad hung about in disgraced idleness. "We shall have to sell Spottie!" said his mother, in her downheartedness at the expense and poverty falling on her, and the words hung like a weight at her son's heart. Sell Spottie! the children's souls clung to him. "Father, that pet lamb of Jep Sharp's is more mine than his, you know," is what the squire's son said to him about that time. "No my son, I gave it to him, and a gift is a gift," spoke the squire in his justice. "Then buy him for me, father." "I doubt if the lad would sell it," said the squire. "Yes, he would; you could make him." His son was importunate; this was his cry, morning, noon, and night; and, at last, his indulgent parent walked to the cottage, to see what could be done. "I want to buy your son's lamb for mine," said the great man, loftily, to Jep's mother. "I doubt if he'd sell it, squire; 'twould go hard with him if he did," returned she, her motherly heart throbbing fast. "He's my father's already," put in young Ru. "Nay, Sir, the creature was a gift to my son." "And I offer a fair price for it, so it is doubly mine, as it were." "Yes, but I can't say yes or no without speaking to the lad," pleaded the gentle mother. "Well, speak to him," returned squire Barlow, which she did, and the boy shed such a torrent of tears over his pet, that night, when he shut him up in the outhouse, as fairly to startle him. Sorrowful days followed, after sending his refusal to the Hall, while they waited, and dared not mention the matter to the shepherd, sick nigh to death. And oh! frost and snow lay on the ground, but Spottie nestled and revelled in his hay. "If you refuse to sell the lamb, you quit my cottage," this was the threat the angered squire sent them.