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And hark! here comes the cattle-train bearing the cattle of a
thousand hills, sheepcots, stables, and cow-yards in the air,
drovers with their sticks, and shepherd boys in the midst of their
flocks, all but the mountain pastures, whirled along like leaves
blown from the mountains by the September gales. The air is filled
with the bleating of calves and sheep, and the hustling of oxen, as
if a pastoral valley were going by. When the old bell-wether at the
head rattles his bell, the mountains do indeed skip like rams and
the little hills like lambs. A carload of drovers, too, in the
midst, on a level with their droves now, their vocation gone, but
still clinging to their useless sticks as their badge of office.
But their dogs, where are they? It is a stampede to them; they are
quite thrown out; they have lost the scent. Methinks I hear them
barking behind the Peterboro' Hills, or panting up the western slope
of the Green Mountains. They will not be in at the death. Their
vocation, too, is gone.


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