He found the pipe and meditatively filled it with fragrant tobacco. It was new, the taste of burning varnish was not wholly absent, yet he couldn’t remember that his expensive cigarettes had ever given him the same delight. It was a herdsman’s smoke, he thought, and for the time being at least he was a herdsman. And the thought of refusing the meager wage that the flock owner would be willing to pay for his inexperienced services didn’t even occur to him. He wasn’t, he remembered, devoting his time for nothing. And he was somewhat startled by the thought that for the first time in his life his—Hugh Gaylord’s—time was actually worth somebody’s good money. There would be a satisfaction in that little wage that he had never received from the handsome checks that he got monthly from his trust company. The clinking dollars would be worth showing to the boys at his club,—trophies greater than the cups he had occasionally won at golf and tennis. A herder of sheep,—that was the title and degree of Hugh Gaylord, late of the Greenwood Club. The whole idea amused him more than he could tell. The best of it was that no one would mistake his calling. He looked the part. He hadn’t shaved—he remembered by the sudden feel of scratchy whiskers on his chin—for three days, and he had the disreputable look that usually results from such an omission. His outing clothes were torn, drenched, soiled, and dust-covered. At first he had felt somewhat uncomfortable in his unsightly togs; he had regretted the departure of his usual well-groomed appearance, but now he actually rejoiced in his disreputability. He wouldn’t have any trouble convincing the camp-tender—when that mysterious gentleman should reveal himself—that sheep-herding was his fitting station in life. He would make, he thought with a laugh, a fairly plausible tramp. He had been greatly fatigued by his hard swim in Silver Creek, but now he felt refreshed. And he found himself wondering at the ease with which laughter came to his lips. It wasn’t the usual thing with Hugh Gaylord at all. He found to his surprise that life was full of things to laugh at: the incongruity of his position, the awkward antics of the lambs, the grandmotherly concern of the ewes, the whole irresistible joke of existence. Before, Hugh had laughed in really but two ways—one at wit (usually the forced wit of a professional comedian) and the other in scorn. One of these two ways, it seemed to him, had wholly left him now. The ability to be really scornful of anything in the wide world had seemingly passed away. The vision of himself watching the flocks had brought a new tolerance, a new breadth of view toward all the world. Never in his life, so far as he could remember, had he laughed from the simple joy of life, the laugh of sheer delight. Somehow, he had never learned to know delight in its true sense.