But here were sheep constantly vanishing in large numbers
without leaving even a trace of themselves. Something must be very far
wrong somewhere. They were angry men, the Peeblesshire hill farmers,
that summer of 1762, angry and sore puzzled, for up Manor Water and the
Leithen, by Glensax Burn and the Quair, and over the hills into
Selkirkshire, the tale was ever the same, sheep gone, and never a trace
of them to be found.
In Newby was a tenant, William Gibson, whose losses had been
particularly severe, and, not unnaturally, Gibson was in a very
irritable frame of mind; so upset, indeed, was he that, before the faces
of the men, he blurted out on one occasion the statement that in his
opinion these continued losses were due chiefly to carelessness or
ignorance of their work, if not to something even worse, on the part of
the shepherds. Now, to throw doubt on their knowledge or skill was bad
enough, but any insinuation as to their honesty was like rubbing salt on
open wounds. It touched them on the raw, even though no direct
accusation had been made, for a finer, more capable, careful, and honest
class of men than the Border shepherd has never existed anywhere. Deep,
therefore, was their anger, wrathful the mutterings that accompanied
them in their long tramps over the windy hills; it would have gone ill
with any one detected in possession of so much as a lamb's tail to which
he might fail to establish his legal right.
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