As Hilary was telling me of such things as we sat in his house one evening, there grew upon our ears a peculiar sound, a humming deep bass, somewhat resembling the low notes of a piano with a pressure on the pedal.

It increased and became louder, coming from the road which passed the house; it was caused by a very large flock of sheep driven slowly.

The individual 'baa' of each lamb was so mixed, as it were, with the bleat of its fellow that the swelling sound took a strange, mysterious tone; a voice that seemed to speak of trouble, and perplexity, and anxiety for rest.

Hilary, as a farmer, must of course go out to see whose they were, and I went with him; but before he reached the garden gate he turned back, remarking, 'It's Johnson's flock; I know the tang of his tankards.' The flat-shaped bells hung on a sheep's neck are called tankards; and Hilary could distinguish one flock from another by the varying notes of their bells.
Reclining on the sweet short sward under the hawthorn on the Down I looked over the Idover plain, and thought of the olden times.

As I gazed I presently observed, far away beside some ricks, the short black funnel of an engine, and made it out to be a steam-plough waiting till the corn should be garnered to tear up the stubble.