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almost familiar…
             
    Something dark was moving along the path over the fields toward the meadow. It moved fast. There was a moment of panic among the sheep, who all galloped uphill without taking their eyes off the newcomer. God was back. He was pacing up and down the meadow like a hound on a trail, his long nose pointing to the ground.
    He walked all round the dolmen and up the footpath to the cliffs. He almost fell over the edge, but at the last moment that nose shot up again and saw the great expanse of blue in front of it. Then the tall black body came to a halt. A sigh passed through the flock. The sheep had been watching God and the movements of his nose ever since the pair of them had started toward the cliffs.
    The black-clad man glanced briefly their way. Othello lowered his horns menacingly, but God had already set off along the footpath toward the village. After three or four paces he heard something. He froze, then turned abruptly and fled along the footpath out to the moorland, his face pale and anxious.
    The sheep heard it too—a humming, rushing noise. It sounded like the noise they themselves had made when they invaded George’s vegetable garden. It was coming closer. Now they heard dogs barking, and there were human voices too. The sheep saw exactly what the long-nosed man had been running away from. A flock was moving toward the meadow, a flock such as the sheep had never seen before.

3
    Miss Maple Gets Wet
    George had not liked other human beings. It was rare for any of them to pass the meadow—maybe a farmer now and then or an old woman who wanted a good gossip—and when they did, George got cross. He used to put a very loud cassette in his gray tape recorder and escape into the vegetable garden, where he worked on something as dirty as possible until the visitor had gone away again.
    So the sheep had never seen a whole flock of humans before, and they were too surprised to panic. Later, Mopple claimed to have seen seven people in the flock, but he was shortsighted. Zora counted twenty, Miss Maple forty-five, and Sir Ritchfield lots and lots—more than he could count, anyway. But Ritchfield had a terrible memory, particularly when he was worked up. He forgot what he had counted already, so he counted everything and everyone twice or three times. He counted the sheepdogs too.
    Mopple stared shortsightedly and morosely at the humans. Well, they could forget the theory of the murderer returning to the scene of his crime now. They had all come back to the scene of the crime, and the murderer must surely be concealed among them. With curiosity, the sheep watched the human flock moving on. It was led by neither the strongest nor the brightest among them but by Tom O’Malley. Then came the children, then the women, and finally the men, who were hanging back a little with their hands awkwardly thrust into their trouser pockets. Well behind them again came several very old folk, who could move only slowly and shakily.
    Tom had brought a rusty old spade with him. He rammed it into the earth at least ten paces from where George had been lying. The people retreated, as if Tom had splashed them with cold water, and formed a circle at a respectful distance.
    “It was here,” shouted Tom. “Right here. The blood splattered all the way to here,” he said, taking two long strides toward the dolmen. “And right here,” he added, with three strides in the other direction, “is where I was standing meself. The moment I see it, I knew it was all up with old George. Blood everywhere. And his face all distorted, horrible it were, with his tongue bright blue and hanging out.”
    None of this was true. Miss Maple thought how odd that was. It should really have been just as Tom said: blood everywhere, a look of pain frozen on George’s face. But George had been there on the meadow looking as if he’d just lain down to sleep.
    The human flock retreated a little farther and uttered a strange breathy