Midwinter Nightingale Read Online Free Page B

we've—” Her last instruction was drowned in a tremendous outbreak of baaing from the sheep as if their state had become much worse—more, suddenly, than they could bear.
    Petulantly, Jorinda snatched up her cat in its cage and followed the nurse, turning, as she stepped down onto the platform, for a final beseeching look at Simon.
    Knowing that it would take at least five or ten minutesfor the train to be divided and the two parts to go their separate ways, Simon waited a moment or two, until Jorinda and her nurse ought to have left the station, before stepping out to make sure that his own compartment and the horse box were correctly positioned in the part of the train that would turn south to Windfall Clumps. What was his surprise, then, to see that Jorinda was still on the platform, much farther back, toward the rear, beyond the horse box, in earnest confabulation with a grimy-looking man who was leaning on a long pole. She handed him something—money, perhaps— then, without noticing Simon, turned and followed Nurse Mara through a wicket onto the road beyond, where a chaise drawn by four horses waited. Two men followed, heavily burdened down with luggage.
    Simon stayed where he was until the carriage began to move; then he walked along to the horse box. Behind him he could hear shouts as men uncoupled the first four coaches that would continue westward to the Combe country. At the rear of the train a second engine was huffing into position to push the stock cars and a single passenger compartment south to Windfall Clumps and Marshport.
    Now Simon saw the reason for all the bleating he had been hearing for the past hour, and he was appalled.
    Three cattle coaches had been hitched on behind the horse box and they all held sheep. But the coaches were not solid wooden cars—they were merely topless cages constructed from thin metal bars, each about twice theheight of a man; and the sheep had been stuffed into them quite regardless of the poor animals' comfort, so that the ones on the floor of the cage were being crushed by the others piled on top of them. Each cage was crammed to its fullest capacity, and the top layer of sheep in each cage was held down by a tight net.
    The ones at the bottom must soon be suffocated, thought Simon in horror. Indeed he saw that one poor beast, on the floor of the car, had been so desperate for air that she had thrust her head between two of the iron cage bars, buckling them and almost decapitating herself in her struggle to get some breath into her lungs.
    Simon was filled with such fury and outrage at this sight that he strode along to the engine and said to the driver, who was helping another man connect its coupling to the cattle cars, “Whose sheep are these?”
    The driver turned and looked at Simon in mild astonishment. “Blest if I know, guvner! We gotta take em to Marshport—that's all
I
know.”
    “Well, who does know?”
    “That feller as loaded em and traveled here along of em. Where is he? He was along there a minute ago. He left his crook—here it is, a-leaning against the 'waybill.”
    Simon recognized the staff of the grimy man who had talked to Jorinda. But of the man himself there was no sign.
    “How did he bring the sheep?”
    “Drove em onto the platform, guvner, an' hoisted em into the trucks. There was only just room. He had a dog,a handy clever brute that one were, kept the wethers rounded up.”
    But the man and his dog had gone; though he searched all over the small station, Simon found no sign of them.
    Returning to the engine driver and his mate, who were looking at him in mild amazement, Simon said, “This is disgraceful! There are laws forbidding such ill-treatment of animals.”
    “Arr. So there oughter be!
But
, who's about to see they're kept?” said the driver, and his mate nodded gloomily and spat.
    “Well,
I'm
going to, now, this minute. I'm going to let those poor beasts out.”
    “Eh! Ye canna do that!” The driver was