Page:Walks in the Black Country and its green border-land.pdf/262

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Walks in the Black Country.

Devonshire heifers leading the van. He knew they were Devonshires; he could tell them by their breath, and he dashed through the sheep to pull one of them by the ear "for auld lang syne." But the coy heifer, not gifted with the intuition he claimed to himself as a Devonshire man, declined his caressing pinch of the ear, and darted aside, giving the Devonian poet an admonitory switch with her tail. The drover, too, an intelligent young man, was proud of his Devonshires, and said his master. Sir Thomas Bowher, kept no other cattle on his estate.

As the tired herd moved too slowly for us, we made our way gently through them and walked on to the village. We found it fast asleep in the dark, with scarcely a light to be seen at eight o'clock. The gate of the churchyard was open, however, and we felt our way up the walk with a staff, and traced out the contour of the old church up as far as the roof. Its windows had no speculation in their cold and silent eyes; and one could hardly fancy that the departed spirits of the slumbering families entombed within those walls would wish to visit by night that still and solemn darkness. Still our nature is human in spite of philosophy, and we had to confess to each other a little of the old boyhood feeling about ghosts as we put our faces to the windows and tried to recognize objects within. After making