The baby was asleep when he deposited it on the doorstep, but it woke shortly after, and began to cry lustily for food, but the doors and windows being all closed, its wailing did not penetrate to the inside of the house. But before the carpenter had been gone half an hour footsteps approached the house, and the shepherd and his dog entered the gate of the field in which it stood. A fine, big, handsome man looked this shepherd as he paused to fasten the gate; about thirty years old, fair, with a florid complexion, blue eyes, and a long, yellowish beard, a face more remarkable for its kindly good humour than for its intelligence. He was dressed in a long smock, and he carried a crook, so that there was no mistaking his occupation, of which, by the way, he was very proud; his father and his grandfather and their fathers and grandfathers had been shepherds before him for many generations, and that he should ever be anything else than a shepherd was the last idea likely to enter John Shelley's mind. A shepherd by birth and education, he followed his calling with an ardour which would have amounted to passion in a warmer temperament. His sheep were his first thought on waking, his last as he closed his eyes at night, and he understood them and their ways thoroughly. The life suited him exactly; it might be a lonely life, wandering for hours on the downs without meeting a living creature day after day, except, perhaps, occasionally a neighbouring shepherd, but he was used to it. It might be an anxious life, especially in lambing time, but he was lucky, and rarely lost any lambs. It might be a dangerous life sometimes in the winter fogs, rambling about on the hills with the risk of falling into a chalk pit and breaking his neck, but he was always too anxious about his sheep when overtaken by a fog to think of his own danger. Then the wages were good, and the same all the year round, with the chance of making some extra money in the shearing season, and so much a head on each lamb that he reared; and to all intents and purposes he was his own master, for the farmer to whom the sheep belonged entrusted the management of the flock entirely to him. But while the shepherd was fastening the gate the dog ran to the baby, whose cry had reached his quick ears before it did his master's, and having sniffed all round it, he set up some short, quick barks, and ran back to the shepherd, calling his attention to the baby as plainly as his inability to speak would allow him. "What is it, Rover? what is it? Down, sir, it is only the baby crying; the window must be open," said the shepherd, as he approached the house, but Rover, as if to contradict his master, ran up to the bundle on the doorstep, and barked louder than ever.