The flock overhears Ham and the priest discussing Kate, McCarthy, and George when Miss Maple, Mopple the Whale, and Othello carry out an exercise designed to make them less afraid of the butcher. Watching from outside in the drizzle, they hear a conversation that joins sheep slaughter, human guilt, George’s death, and the chain used in an apparent attempt to implicate Ham. The encounter also turns the flock’s fear into a tool: its sudden appearance at the window sends both men into alarm, and the sheep return to the meadow knowing that a fearless gaze can frighten humans.

The Exercise and the Eavesdropping

Melmoth assigns the three sheep to go into the village and watch the butcher until they are no longer afraid of him. The exercise is part of a wider set of trials in which other members of the flock confront particular fears. Miss Maple, Mopple the Whale, and Othello peer through raindrops on a window and see Ham sitting with God, the long-nosed priest, at a table. A bottle and two glasses of golden liquid stand between them. The sheep have gone to observe a threat; instead, they become witnesses to a conversation the men believe private.

The setting gives the eavesdropping its tension. The sheep watch from the dark outside while the men speak indoors, and even Mopple the Whale finds the return journey through the night frightening. He pushes back between Miss Maple and Othello, using their company as a refuge while he keeps watching. The exercise does not instantly erase fear. It makes the sheep stay near it long enough to hear what the butcher and priest reveal.

Sheep, Slaughter, and George

Ham tries to explain how he once justified his work. He had told himself that sheep were bred to be slaughtered and that their deaths were clean and ordinary, unlike those of horses or donkeys. But his account falters when he remembers George. George gave his sheep names, spoke to them, and treated them as individuals; when Melmoth disappeared, George came to Ham and insisted they search for him with the butcher’s dogs. Ham recalls George with unusual warmth, calling him better than the rest, and the memory exposes a contrast between the butcher’s customary view of sheep as livestock and George’s attachment to his flock.

The conversation also reframes the apparitions that have frightened the men. God recalls seeing a black, four-horned ram at George’s funeral. Ham describes a huge white ram that drove him off the cliff and another bright shape he saw in the mist. God recounts a gray, horned ram appearing at a window while he was showing a tourism representative around; he sent the woman to Beth. He also remembers a black, seven-horned ram appearing in the confessional when he expected to speak with Gabriel. Both men interpret these encounters as supernatural punishment or vengeance. The sheep hear the accounts, but the scene presents them as the men’s frightened explanations, not as proof of a supernatural cause.

Kate, Alice, and the Chain

Ham admits that he continued to long for Kate after she married George. He says he bought a CCTV camera so he could watch her coming to the butcher’s shop, while insisting that he never touched her. He also claims he did not join the business involving McCarthy, though McCarthy had harmed him. Faced with the question of what might explain the apparitions, Ham returns to his work slaughtering sheep. His words link his unease to the trade he had treated as ordinary, while his fixation on Kate reveals a separate, human source of shame and resentment.

God’s own resentment emerges when Ham challenges him about Alice. God insists that Alice left him and says he still sees her in every woman. Ham answers that all Alice wanted was honesty. The argument shifts the discussion away from abstract sin: Ham accuses God of failing Alice afterward, and God’s hurt response makes clear that their dispute is personal as well as religious. The scene does not resolve their history, but it reveals that God’s talk of sin and penance sits beside an unresolved grievance over his sister.

God then describes his role in a plan involving Kate’s gold chain. He says that someone realized the chain would be useful if it were found at the crime scene, and that he went to retrieve it after Josh confessed. Ham identifies Josh as the person God means. Their exchange indicates that the chain was connected to an effort to implicate Ham, while also showing that God knew about the plan and acted to recover the object. The revelation joins the earlier suspicions around George’s murder to the men’s concealed dealings; it does not, by itself, establish every participant’s motive or the full course of the scheme.

The Sheep Turn Fear Outward

The conversation breaks off when Ham sees something at the window. He shouts that the figure is there and wheels himself rapidly toward the door. God stares at the dark rectangle where, for an instant, three sheep’s heads have appeared in reddish light. The sheep have made themselves visible at the moment when the men are already discussing horned apparitions, and the sight sends both listeners into alarm.

Miss Maple, Mopple the Whale, and Othello trot back to the meadow in the drizzle, pleased that they have frightened the two men even though their own fear has not entirely vanished. Othello takes particular pride in having impressed God with his four horns. Mopple the Whale, who had needed the others beside him on the way there, now keeps pace with Othello instead of dropping timidly behind. The exercise has produced a practical reversal: the butcher and priest, rather than the sheep, are left afraid. For the flock, the encounter is both an accidental source of knowledge about the human world and a lesson in how attention and a steady gaze can change who frightens whom.