or working it off.'

'Well I know it,' said Hal.

'They never let you go, them spiteful ones. I knowed a plasterer in
Eighteen hundred Sixty-one--down to the Wells. He was a Frenchy--a bad
enemy he was.'

'I had mine too. He was an Italian, called Benedetto. I met him first at
Oxford on Magdalen Tower when I was learning my trade--or trades, I
should say. A bad enemy he was, as you say, but he came to be my
singular good friend,' said Hal as he put down the mallet and settled
himself comfortably.

'What might his trade have been--plasterin'?' Mr. Springett asked.

'Plastering of a sort. He worked in stucco--fresco we call it. Made
pictures on plaster. Not but what he had a fine sweep of the hand in
drawing. He'd take the long sides of a cloister, trowel on his stuff,
and roll out his great all-abroad pictures of saints and croppy-topped
trees quick as a webster unrolling cloth almost. Oh, Benedetto could
draw, but a was a little-minded man, professing to be full of secrets of
colour or plaster--common tricks, all of 'em--and his one single talk
was how Tom, Dick or Harry had stole this or t'other secret art from
him.'

'I know that sort,' said Mr. Springett. 'There's no keeping peace or
making peace with such. An' they're mostly born an' bone idle.'

'True. Even his fellow-countrymen laughed at his jealousy. We two came
to loggerheads early on Magdalen Tower. I was a youngster then. Maybe I
spoke my mind about his work.'

'You shouldn't never do that.' Mr. Springett shook his head. 'That sort
lay it up against you.'

'True enough. This Benedetto did most specially. Body o' me, the man
lived to hate me! But I always kept my eyes open on a plank or a
scaffold. I was mighty glad to be shut of him when he quarrelled with
his Guild foreman, and went off, nose in air, and paints under his arm.
But'--Hal leaned forward--'if you hate a man or a man hates you----'

'_I_ know. You're everlastin' running acrost him,' Mr. Springett
interrupted. 'Excuse me, sir.' He leaned out of the window, and shouted
to a carter who was loading a cart with bricks.

'Ain't you no more sense than to heap 'em up that way?' he said. 'Take
an' throw a hundred of 'em off. It's more than the team can compass.
Throw 'em off, I tell you, and make another trip for what's left over.
Excuse me, sir. You was saying----'

'I was saying that before the end of the year I went to Bury to
strengthen the lead-work in the great Abbey east window there