sheep-stealer

Next day, accordingly, the quest for the clever sheep-stealer became general and keen, to all appearance at least.

Wessex Tales 2006

But morality is not absolute, it is conventional and relative: we do not, as once, punish the sheep-stealer with the gallows nor the heretic with red-hot irons, for our standards have changed with the years.

Spirit and Music H. Ernest Hunt

A sheep-stealer had killed a sheep, and was carrying it home slung round his shoulders when he came to this gate.

From John O'Groats to Land's End Robert Naylor

In Sylt the story goes that he was a sheep-stealer, that enticed sheep to him with a bundle of cabbages, until, as an everlasting warning to others, he was placed in the moon, where he constantly holds in his hand a bundle of cabbages.

Moon Lore Timothy Harley

Of the three grandsons of Ada Jukes, who were themselves the sons of her one illegitimate son, their family report is as follows: -- The first was licentious, a sheep-stealer, quarrelsome, and an habitual drunkard.

A Plea for the Criminal Being a reply to Dr. Chapple's work: 'The Fertility of the Unfit', and an Attempt to explain the leading principles of Criminological and Reformatory Science James Leslie Allan Kayll 1908

The prophet's style was quaint and picturesque when he compared the great king to a sheep-stealer; but the object was not to insult the king, it was to make him think, to rouse him; to let him see by the light of a poetic fancy the gulf to which he was descending, that he might thereafter love mercy, walk humbly, and, controlling his passions, keep untarnished the lustre of the Crown.

The Tribune of Nova Scotia A Chronicle of Joseph Howe 1903

Everybody believes Mart is a hoss thief an 'sheep-stealer an' all that, but he hain't ever been caught at it.

Viola Gwyn George Barr McCutcheon 1897

This I met with the obvious retort that those were the nights which a commonplace sheep-stealer would naturally choose for his work.

Tales of Terror and Mystery Arthur Conan Doyle 1894

I confess that I have never been able to feel the force of that argument which says, for example, that because a man is a sheep-stealer he must needs be a bad husband.

The Fool Errant Maurice Hewlett 1892

I'm like Dan-ny-Clae, the sheep-stealer, when he came to die.

The Manxman A Novel - 1895 Hall Caine 1892