On a long green slope where thyme grew between the stones, a shepherd kept his sheep from morning until the evening star. The flock moved together like pale clouds lowered to the earth, with some cropping the grass and others nosing at the clover. Standing with his staff, the shepherd counted them whenever they passed from one patch of ground to another.
Not far below the hill, a wolf watched from the shade of a thorn tree. He saw how the sheep pressed close to one another when the shepherd led them, and that no strange creature could come near while the staff was upright in the shepherd’s hand. Yet the wolf did not turn away. Lowering himself into the grass, he kept watching until he had formed a plan that pleased him.
That afternoon, an old fleece lay drying on a rock beside the fold. It had been sheared from a ram in the spring and saved for patching blankets. When the shepherd went to draw water from the well, the wolf crept from the thorn tree, took the fleece in his teeth, and slipped behind a hazel bush. There he pulled it over his back and shoulders. Though the wool hung unevenly and one gray paw showed beneath it, from a little distance he looked almost like a broad-backed sheep.
Toward dusk, the shepherd called, and the flock began to move down the slope. Bells gave a small answering sound as hooves pressed the dust into a narrow …
6 chapters
