The Shepherd of the Hills

The stranger looked tired and wet. His was a face marked deeply by pride; pride of birth, of intellect, of culture; the face of a scholar and poet; but it was more – it was the countenance of one fairly staggering under a burden of disappointment and grief. As the stranger walked, he looked searchingly into the mists on every hand, and paused frequently as if questioning the proper course. Suddenly he stepped quickly forward. His ear had caught the sharp ring of a horse’s shoe on a flint rock somewhere in the mists on the mountain side above… .