ent among the men.

"Burn my body! and what's the women to me?" said Drayton.

"Nay, nowt," answered the blacksmith. "Your awn wife seems nowdays
powerful keen for your company."

Drayton's eyes were red, but the fire died out of them in an instant. He
stepped up to the blacksmith and held out his hand.

"You've licked me," he said, in another tone, "but I ain't the man to
keep spite, I ain't; so come along, old fence, and let's wet it."

"That's weel said," put in Tommy Lowthwaite, the landlord.

"It's no'but fair," said Dick, the miller.

"He's a reet sort, after all," said Job, the mason.

"He's his awn fadder's son, is Paul Ritson," said Tom o' Dint.

In two minutes more the soiled company were trampling knee-deep through
rank beds of rushes on their way to the other side of the dale. They
stopped a few yards from a pit shaft with its headgear and wheel.

"Let's take my brother's ken for it," said Drayton, and they turned into
a one-story house that stood near.

It was a single capacious chamber, furnished more like a library than an
office; carpets, rugs, a cabinet, easychairs, and a solid table in the
middle of the floor. The cock-fighters filed in and sat down on every
available chair, on the table, and at last on the floor.

"Squat and whiff," said Drayton, "and, Tommy, you out with the corks,
quick."

"It must be a bonny money-making consarn to keep up the likes of this,"
said the miller, settling himself uneasily in an easy-chair.

Dick was telling himself what a fool he had been not to ask more than
the fifty pounds he received for the damage once done by fire to his
mill.

"Have you never heard as it ain't all gold as glitters?" said Drayton;
and he struck a lucifer match on the top of the mahogany table.

"What, man, dusta mean as the pit's not paying?" said the blacksmith.

Drayton gave his head a sidelong shake of combined astuteness and
reserve.

"I mak' no doubt now as you have to lend Master Hugh many a gay penny,"
said Tom o' Dint in an insinuating tone.

"Least said, soonest mended," said Drayton, sententiously, and smiled a
mighty knowing smile.

Then the men laughed, and the landlord handed the bottles round, and all
drank out of the necks, and puffed dense volumes of smoke from their
pipes, and spat on the carpet.

And still the birds sung in the clear air without, and still the ghylls
rumbled, and still the light wind souched through the grass, and still
the morning sunl