Can any sound be
more soothing than the tinkle of cow-bells in a mountain pass, as
twilight falls softly, like the wings of a brooding bird? It is to the
ear what a cool draught of spring water is to thirsty lips. There are
verses of poetry in it, only to be reset and rearranged, like pearls
fallen from their string; there is a perfume of primroses in it; there
is the colour of early dawn, or of fading sunset, when a young moon is
rising, curved and white as a baby's arm; there is also the same voice
that speaks from the brook or the river running over rocks.
Suddenly we were in the midst of a great herd of cows, which blew out
volumes of clover breath upon us, in mild surprise at our existence.
They rubbed against us, or ambled away, lowing to each other, and I
was surprised to find that, instead of each neck being provided with a
bell, as I had fancied from the multitudinous tinklings, one cow only
was thus ornamented.
"How was the selection made?" I asked Joseph. "Did they choose the
most popular cow, a sort of stable-yard belle, voted by her companions
a fit leader of her set; or was the choice guided by chance?" Joseph
could not tell me, and I suppose that I shall never know.
The big, lumbering forms crowded so closely round us in the twilight
shadows, that now and then, to force a passage, Joseph was obliged to
pull a slowly whisking tail, resembling almost exactly an
old-fashioned bell-rope.
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