ient maltster sitting in the midst turned at this--his turning
being as the turning of a rusty crane.

"That's never Gable Oak's grandson over at Norcombe--never!" he said,
as a formula expressive of surprise, which nobody was supposed for a
moment to take literally.

"My father and my grandfather were old men of the name of Gabriel,"
said the shepherd, placidly.

"Thought I knowed the man's face as I seed him on the rick!--thought
I did! And where be ye trading o't to now, shepherd?"

"I'm thinking of biding here," said Mr. Oak.

"Knowed yer grandfather for years and years!" continued the maltster,
the words coming forth of their own accord as if the momentum
previously imparted had been sufficient.

"Ah--and did you!"

"Knowed yer grandmother."

"And her too!"

"Likewise knowed yer father when he was a child. Why, my boy
Jacob there and your father were sworn brothers--that they were
sure--weren't ye, Jacob?"

"Ay, sure," said his son, a young man about sixty-five, with a
semi-bald head and one tooth in the left centre of his upper jaw,
which made much of itself by standing prominent, like a milestone in
a bank. "But 'twas Joe had most to do with him. However, my son
William must have knowed the very man afore us--didn't ye, Billy,
afore ye left Norcombe?"

"No, 'twas Andrew," said Jacob's son Billy, a child of forty, or
thereabouts, who manifested the peculiarity of possessing a cheerful
soul in a gloomy body, and whose whiskers were assuming a chinchilla
shade here and there.

"I can mind Andrew," said Oak, "as being a man in the place when I
was quite a child."

"Ay--the other day I and my youngest daughter, Liddy, were over at
my grandson's christening," continued Billy. "We were talking about
this very family, and 'twas only last Purification Day in this very
world, when the use-money is gied away to the second-best poor folk,
you know, shepherd, and I can mind the day because they all had to
traypse up to the vestry--yes, this very man's family."

"Come, shepherd, and drink. 'Tis gape and swaller with us--a drap of
sommit, but not of much account," said the maltster, removing from
the fire his eyes, which were vermilion-red and bleared by gazing
into it for so many years. "Take up the God-forgive-me, Jacob. See
if 'tis warm, Jacob."

Jacob stooped to the God-forgive-me, which was a two-handled tall mug
standing in the ashes, cracked and charred with heat: it was rather
furred with e