boy in front led the horses, and whistled. The parson hummed a tune as he turned his furrows. Sometimes he sung in a drawling tone —
"Bonny lass, canny lass, wilta be mine?
Thou's nowder wesh dishes nor sarra the swine."
At the turn-rows he paused, and rested on his plow handles. He rested longest at the turn-rows on the roadside of the field. Like the shivering mists that grouped about the open doors, he was held there by light and warmth.
The smithy stood at the opposite side of the road, cut into the rock of the fell on three sides, and having a roof of thatch. The glare of the fire, now rising, now falling, streamed through the open door. It sent a long vista of light through the blank and pulsating haze. The vibrations of the anvil were all but the only sounds on the air; the alternate thin clink of the smith's hand-hammer and the thick thud of the striker's sledge echoed in unseen recesses of the hills beyond.
This smithy of Newlands filled the function which under a higher propitiousness of circumstance is answered by a club. Girded with his leather apron, his sleeves rolled tightly over his knotty arms, the smith, John Proudfoot, stood waiting for his heat. His striker, Geordie Moore, had fallen to at the bellows. On the tool chest sat Gubblum Oglethorpe, leisurely smoking. His pony was tied to the hasp of the gate. The miller, Dick of the Syke, sat on a pile of iron rods. Tom o' Dint, the little bow-legged fiddler and postman, was sharpening at the grindstone a penknife already worn obliquely to a point by many similar applications.
"Nay, I can make nowt of him. He's a changed man for sure," said the blacksmith.
Gubblum removed his pipe and muttered sententiously:
"It's die-spensy, I tell thee."
"Dandering and wandering about at all hours of the day and night," continued the blacksmith.
"It's all die-spensy," repeated the peddler.
"And as widderful and wizzent as a polecat nailed up on a barn door," said Tom o' Dint, lifting his grating knife from the grindstone and speaking with a voice as hoarse.
"Eh, and as weak as watter with it," added the blacksmith.
"His as was as strong as rum punch," rejoined the fiddler.
"It's die-spensy, John – nowt else," said Gubblum.
The miller broke in testily.
"What's die-spensy?"
"What ails Paul Ritson?" answered Gubblum.
"Shaf on your balderdash," said Dick of the Syke; "die-spensying and die-spensying. You've no' but your die-spensy for everything. Tommy's rusty throat, and John's big toe, and lang Geordie's broken nose, as Giles Raisley gave him a' Saturday neet at the Pack Horse – it's all die-spensy."
The miller was a blusterous fellow, who could swear in lusty anger and laugh in boisterous sport in a single breath.
Gubblum puffed placidly.
"It is die-spensy. I know it by exper'ence," he observed, persistently.
The blacksmith's little eyes twinkled mischievously.
"To be sure you do, Gubblum. You had it bad the day you crossed in the packet from Whitehebben. That was die-spensy – a cute bout too."
"I've heard as it were amazing rough on the watter that day," said Tom, in a pause of the wheel, glancing up knowingly at the blacksmith.
"Heard, had you? Must have been tolerable deaf else. Rough? Why, them do say as the packet were wrecked, and only two planks saved. Gubblum was washed ashore cross-legged on one of them, and his pack on the other."
The long, labored breathings of the bellows ended, the iron was thrown white hot out of the glowing coals on to the anvil, and the clank of the hand-hammer and thud of the sledge were all that could be heard. Then the iron cooled, and was lifted back into the palpitating blaze. The blacksmith stepped to the door, wiped his streaming forehead with one hand and waved the other to the parson plowing in the opposite field.
"A canny morning, Mr. Christian," he shouted. "Bad luck for the parson's young lady, anyhow – her sweetheart is none to keen for the wedding," he said, turning again to the fire.
"She's a fine like lass, yon," said Tom o' Dint.
An old man, iron gray, with a pair of mason's mallets swung front and back across his shoulders, stepped into the smithy.
"How fend ye, John?" he said.
"Middling weel, Job," answered the blacksmith; "and what's your errand now?"
"A chisel or two for tempering."
"Cutting in the church-yard to-day, Job? Cold wark, eh?"
"Ey, auld Ritson's stone as they've putten over him."
The blacksmith tapped the peddler on the arm.
"Gubblum, shall I tell you what's a-matter with Paul?"
"Never you bother, John, it's die-spensy."
"It's fretting – that's it – fretting for his father."
"Fretting for his fiddlesticks!" shouted Dick, the miller; "Allan's dead this half a year."
"John's reet," said Job, the stone-cutter; "it is fretting."
Dick of the Syke got up off the iron rods.
"Because a young fellow has given you a job of wark to cut his father's headstone and tell a lie or two in letters half an inch deep and two shillings a dozen – does that show 'at he's fretting?"
"He didn't do nowt of the sort," said Job, hotly.
"Dusta mean as it were the other one – Hugh?" inquired the miller.
"Maybe that's reet," said Job.
Dick of the Syke was not to be beaten for lack of the logic of circumlocution.
"Then what for do you say as Paul is weeping his insides out about his father, when he leaves it to other folks to put a bit of stone over him and a few scrats on it?"
"Because I do say so," said Job, conclusively.
"And maybe you've got your reasons, Job," said the blacksmith with insinuating suavity.
"Maybe I have," said the mason. Then softening, he added, "I don't mind telling you, neither. Yesterday morning when I went to wark I found Paul Ritson lying full length across his father's grave. His clothes were soaking with dew, and his face was as white as a Feb'uary mist, and stiff and set like, and his hair was frosted over same as a pane in the church window."
"Never!"
"He was like to take no note of me, but I gave him a shake, and called out, 'What, Mr. Paul! why, what, man! what's this?'"
"And what ever did he say?"
"Say! Nowt. He get hissel' up – and gay stiff in the limbs he looked, to be sure – and walked off without a word."
Gubblum on the tool chest had removed his pipe from between his lips during the mason's narrative, and listened with a face
