"Now don't you take on like that," said his wife, who was a _very_ sensible woman: "but tell us all about it first, whatever it is as has given you this shake-up, and then me and you and the son here, between us, we ought to be able to get to the bottom of it!"
"It began some nights ago," said the shepherd. "You know that cave up there--I never liked it, somehow, and the sheep never liked it neither, and when sheep don't like a thing there's generally some reason for it. Well, for some time past there's been faint noises coming from that cave--noises like heavy sighings, with grunts mixed up in them; and sometimes a snoring, far away down--_real_ snoring, yet somehow not _honest_ snoring, like you and me o'nights, you know!"
"Of course I was terrible frightened," the shepherd went on; "yet somehow I couldn't keep away. So this very evening, before I come down, I took a cast round by the cave, quietly. And there--O Lord! there I saw him at last, as plain as I see you!"
"Saw _who_?" said his wife, beginning to share in her husband's nervous terror.
"Why _him_, I'm a telling you!" said the shepherd. "He was sticking half-way out of the cave, and seemed to be enjoying of the cool of the evening in a poetical sort of way. He was as big as four cart-horses, and all covered with shiny scales--deep-blue scales at the top of him, shading off to a tender sort o' green below. As he breathed, there was that sort of flicker over his nostrils that you see over our chalk roads on a baking windless day in summer. He had his chin on his paws, and I should say he was meditating about things. Oh, yes, a peaceable sort o' beast enough, and not ramping or carrying on or doing anything but what was quite right and proper. I admit all that. And yet, what am I to do? _Scales_, you know, and claws, and a tail for certain, though I didn't see that end of him--I ain't _used_ to 'em, and I don't _hold_ with 'em, and that's a fact!"
The Boy, who had apparently been absorbed in his book during his father's recital, now closed the volume, yawned, clasped his hands behind his head, and said sleepily:
"It's all right, father. Don't you worry. It's only a dragon."
"Only a dragon?" cried his father. "What do you mean, sitting there, you and your dragons? _Only_ a dragon indeed! And what do _you_ know about it?"