fellow, spared himself the trouble of stooping, for troublesome it would have been with such a weight on his shoulders, and passed on without lifting it. On walking a little further, and pursuing a bend in the road, great was his surprise on finding another shoe, a fellow to the former, lying in the sledge-mark, which, like the rut of a wheel, indented the mud with hollow stripes. In the height of his joy he laid down the sheep, with its legs tied, beside the shoe, and ran back for the other; when Twm Shôn Catti, watching his opportunity, sprang over the hedge, and seized his prize, which he bore off securely, won his bet, and ate his mutton undisturbed. Prothero, although the most good-humoured of country gentlemen, was rather angry with shrewd Roger, whose shrewdness became rather questionable. It was admitted, in excuse, that the most cunning, at times, may be accidentally overreached by his inferior in wit: on this plea the merry magistrate was conciliated, and induced to enter into another wager, precisely like the former, when a similar sum, against our hero, and in favor of his servant was laid and accepted. The man of shrewdness, as before, determined to use the utmost vigilance and caution to preserve his charge and redeem his reputation. He grasped his load, which was a fine fat ewe, most manfully, and swore violent oaths in answer to his master’s exhortation to chariness, that human ingenuity should never trick him again; but “Great protestations do make that doubted, Which we would else right willingly believe.” In his way to Llangattock, he had to pass partly through a wood, which he scarce entered when the bleating of a sheep attracted his attention, and he came to a dead stand, as he intently listened to what he conceived a well-known voice. “Baa!—baa!” again saluted his ear: a sudden conviction rushed across his mind that this was the very sheep he had before lost, which he imagined might have been concealed by Twm in the rocky recesses of that woody dingle. What a glorious chance, thought he, of recovering his lost credit with his master, and depriving his antagonist at the same time, of his hidden prey, and the laurels achieved in the winning of it. He instantly deposited his burthen beneath a tree; and eagerly forcing his way through the copse and bushes, he followed the bleating a considerable way down the wood, when to his great dismay it ceased altogether. A thought now struck him, though rather too late, that the bleating proceeded from no sheep, but a most subtle ram, in the person of Twm Shôn Catti: he hurried back in a grievous fright, and found his surmises but too true—the second sheep, and his high reputation for shrewdness, had both taken flight together.