The ewes lay dead and dying at its foot--a heap of two hundred mangled carcasses, representing in their condition just now at least two hundred more.
Oak was an intensely humane man: indeed, his humanity often tore in pieces any politic intentions of his which bordered on strategy, and carried him on as by gravitation.

A shadow in his life had always been that his flock ended in mutton--that a day came and found every shepherd an arrant traitor to his defenseless sheep.

His first feeling now was one of pity for the untimely fate of these gentle ewes and their unborn lambs.
It was a second to remember another phase of the matter.

The sheep were not insured.

All the savings of a frugal life had been dispersed at a blow; his hopes of being an independent farmer were laid low--possibly for ever.