While in sweet cadence rising small and still The far-off minstrels of the haunted hill, As the last bleating of the fold expires, Tune in the mountain dells their water lyres.

See, see, your murderer is in view: With purple hands and reeking knife, He strips the skin yet warm with life; 10 Your quartered sires, your bleeding dams, The dying bleat of harmless lambs, Call for revenge.

" As she spoke, she took the lamb, which was bleating like mad, laid it on the ground and holding it still, firmly but gently, with her knee, examined it with all the confidence and coolness of a vet.

When all the people were assembled within the church, and the man which had stolen it made no semblant to render ne deliver again this sheep, then St. Patrick commanded, by the virtue of God, that the sheep should bleat and cry in the belly of him that had eaten it, and so happed it that, in the presence of all the people, the sheep cried and bleated in the belly of him that had stolen it.

Mr. Myres is greatly respected by all in his district; he has transmuted the olden ritualistic horror which prevailed in the district, into one of love and reverence; and all his sheep have a genial and affectionate bleat for him.

Or behear ye the sheep, to the husbanding rams how they bleat to the shade!

But when they heard Mr. Wood's voice, they ran to the fence, bleating with pleasure, and trying to push their noses through to get the carrot or turnip, or whatever he was handing to them.

Sometimes their silliness is enhanced by a paltry attempt at effect and emphasis:as in the following account of that very touching and extraordinary occurrence of a lamb bleating among the mountains.

The other bleated at him.

Indeed, the last two days they had not troubled him except by their bleating at dawn.

Joined to the prattle of the purling rills, Were heard the lowing herds along the vale, And flocks loud-bleating from the distant hills, And vacant shepherds piping in the dale; And now and then sweet Philomel would wail, Or stock doves 'plain amid the forest deep, That drowsy rustled to the sighing gale; And still a coil the grasshopper did keep: Yet all these sounds, yblent, inclinèd all to sleep.

And, like the timid lambs that crowd with bleatings in the fold, When they advancing to their throats the furious wolf behold, The lovely Moorish maidens, with wet but flashing eyes, Are crowded in a public square and fill the air with cries; And tho', like tender women, 'tis vain for them to arm, Yet loudly they re-echo the words of the alarm.

As we stopped for our noon-tide refreshment, and dismounting threw ourselves on the fresh herbage just at the verge of a pleasant thicket, we were startled by a tender bleating near us, and presently, breaking its way through the low branches, there came upon us a sweet little dappled fawn, evidently in search of its mother.

Stafford stood and watched her; the collie and the fox-terrier upright on their haunches watching her also; the collie gave an approving bark as, with a pat she liberated the lamb, which went bleating on its way to join its distracted mother, the fox-terrier leapt round her with yaps of excited admiration; and there was admiration in Stafford's eyes also.