"Don't suppose that," observed Stevenson; "strange to say, the thing is originally quite the reverse. I have experienced it several times myself. When I have removed to an unsettled district, which, be it said in passing, has been several times the case, I have not lost a single sheep during the first few months, sometimes even during the whole first year, and that surprised me the more as I found everywhere in the neighbourhood frequent tracks of wolves. At a subsequent period, I was once accidentally witness to the cause of their being so strangely spared, and which had already been mentioned to me by various neighbours. I was standing on the look out for an old buck that had passed that way, and from the spot where I had hid myself, could overlook a little plain below me, where my flock, then consisting of but seven ewes and a ram, was pasturing. Suddenly a wolf broke out from a neighbouring thicket, and was about to pass across the open space. But he certainly must have fallen in with the sheep for the first time then, and they must have appeared very strange to him, for just as I thought that he would select one for his breakfast, and was on that account about to step forward to hinder him, he halted, scented them, advanced timidly a step nearer, and suddenly, when one of the ewes turned round towards him, fled, with rapid bounds, into the cover of the thicket. He was afraid of the creatures which were as yet unknown to him, and it was only in the course of time, perhaps when driven by pinching hunger, that these wolves tasted the first mutton. Thenceforth, it is true, there was an end to safety; the ravenous beasts of prey soon learned how timid and inoffensive that alarming-looking animal was, and how sweet its flesh, and from that time forward did much havoc among the peaceable woolcoats." "But, as the wolf liked the taste of the flesh," said Herbold, "so also might you rear them yourselves, for the sake of the meat." "We don't like it much," Stevenson replied; "the fare of the backwoodsman is Johnny cake, or Indian corn bread, and pork, and on that he lives and thrives. We but rarely slaughter a bullock and cure the meat, for the sake of a change; for it is dry eating, and deer and turkeys generally serve the turn." "Is there much game here?" "Pretty well. He who knows where to seek for it can always find something, and need not come home empty handed, for if there are no deer to be had, he can get squirrels." "Squirrels?" asked Herbold, in astonishment. "Yes, yes, squirrels," said the farmer, smiling; "when you've been awhile in the country, you'll come to relish squirrels too; they are very good eating, especially the grey ones." "But what do you shoot the squirrels with? I see nothing but rifles here."