It was a sweet spring morning (I remember) with a heaven full of big white clouds come up from the westward over Dunkery on a high wind that bent the saplings and set the branches in the great woods stirring. We had gone up the moor, behind Mr. Jordan's house, with the shepherd, to recover a strayed sheep, which, about an hour before noon, the shepherd chanced to espy a long way off, dead, and a mob of ravens over her, buffeted about by the gale. The shepherd immediately ran to the place, where he beat off the ravens and afterwards took up the carcase on his shoulders and went down the combe, leaving us twain together. "It is not often that he loses any beast," said the steward. "'Tis a careful man among the flocks, though among the wenches, not so." I know not why, but this character of the shepherd put me again in mind of my uncle Botolph, upon whom I had not thought for a great while. "Tell me, Peter Sprot," I said, "how it was my father and my uncle came to fighting." "Nay, they came not so far as to fight," cried the steward, with a start. "But they drew upon each other," said I. He sat silent for a little, tugging at his rough hair, as was his wont when he meditated deeply. After awhile, "You never knew your lady mother," he said, in a deep voice, "so that my tale must lack for that which should be chief of it. For to all who knew her, the things which befell seemed a part of her beauty, or rather to issue from it naturally, though, indeed, they were very terrible. Mr. Denis, it is the stream which runs by the old course bursts the bridges in time of winter, and down the common ways that trouble ever comes." "But what trouble was in this," I asked, in the pause he made, "that it were necessary I should have known my mother to comprehend it?" "Nay, not the trouble, master," he answered, "for that was manifest to all. But 'twas her grace and beauty, and her pretty behaviour, that none who knew not Madam Rachel your mother, may conjure e'en the shadow of. "You were a toward lad at all times," he went on, "and when your brother was born, though you were scarce turned two, you would be singing and talking from dawn to dark. Ah! sir, your father did not keep his book-room then, but would be in the great chamber aloft, with you and your lady mother and the nurse, laughing at your new-found words and ditties, and riding you and fondling you--God save us!--as a man who had never lived till then.