Chapter III

The third attempt generally creates or dissipates the charm, cogitated Isegrim. May it be so in this present instance! As he mentally uttered this ejaculation, he found himself in the presence of a third shepherd.

“Ah! my worthy, my excellent friend,” cried he, “I have been looking for you the whole day. I want to communicate a piece of news to you. You must know that I have been struggling desperately of late to regenerate my character. The enormity of my past career, haunted as it is with phantoms of blood and massacre, is for ever before my eyes, and humbles me--oh, dear! how much nobody can guess. I have grown very penitent, and very, very soft-hearted altogether, Shepherd.” Here Isegrim hung his head, overcome for a moment by his emotions. “Still, Shepherd, still--and this is what I want you to understand--I find I can make after all but slight progress by myself. I go on smack smooth enough for a while, and then my zeal flags. I require encouragement and sympathy, and the companionship of the good and the gentle, who could give me advice, and point out to me the path of rectitude continually. In short, you see, if--if you would be but generous enough to allow a sheep or two of enlightened principles to take a walk out with me occasionally, in the cool of the evening, along some sequestered valley, sacred to philosophic musings, I feel that it would prove of the greatest advantage to me, in a moral and intellectual point of view. But ah! I perceive you are laughing at me: may I ask whether there is any thing in my request that strikes you as ridiculous?”

“Permit me to answer your question by another,” said the Shepherd, with a sneer. “Pray, Master Wolf, how old are you?”

“Old enough to be fierce enough,” exclaimed Isegrim, with something of the ferocity of old days in his tone and eye; “let me tell you that, Master Shepherd.”

“And, like all the rest you have been telling me, it is a lie,” was the Shepherd’s response. “You would be fierce if you could; but, to your mortification, you are grown imbecile--you have the will, but want the power. Your mouth betrays you, if your tongue don’t, old deceiver! Yet, though you can bite no longer, you are still, I dare say, able to mumble; and on the whole, I shouldn’t fancy being a sheep’s head and shoulders in your way just now. What’s bred in the bone will never come out of the flesh, says the proverb; and I believe you are one of the last animals one could expect to falsify it. I’ll take right good care to keep you at crook’s length, my crafty neighbour; make yourself certain of that!”