"Of course, I know that from my early days. Will you tell your story speedily?"
"Sir, that is just what I am doing. I brought them without many words to the quarry, where ten times the number of our clodhoppers would only have shovelled at one another. Bless my heart! they did work, and with order and arrangement. Being clothed all in cotton, they had no time to lose, unless they meant to get frozen; and it was a fine sight, I assure your Worship, to see how they showed their shoulder-blades, being skinny from that hot climate, and their brown-freckled arms in the white of the drift, and the Indian steam coming out of them! In about two hours all the ground was clear, and the trees put away, like basket-work; and then we could see what had happened exactly, and even the mark of the pickaxes. Every word of that girl was proved true to a tittle! I never heard finer evidence. We can even see that two men had been at work, and the stroke of their tools was different. You may trust me for getting up a case; but I see that you have no patience, Squire. We shovelled away all the fallen rock, and mould, and stumps, and furze-roots; and, at last, we came to the poor, poor innocent body, as fresh as the daylight!"
"I can hear no more! You have lost no child--if you have, perhaps you could spare it. Tell me nothing--nothing more! But prove that it was my child!"
"Lord a' mercy, your Worship! Why, you are only fit to go to bed! Here, Mary! Mary! Mother Hookham! Curse the bell--I have broken it! Your master is taken very queer! Look alive, woman! Stir your stumps! A pot of hot water and a foot-tub! Don't get scared--he will be all right. I always carry a fleam with me. I can bleed him as well as any doctor. Hold his head up. Let me feel. Oh, he is not going to die just yet! Stop your caterwauling! There, I have relieved his veins. He will know us all in a minute again. He ought to have had a deal more spirit. I never could have expected this. I smoothed off everything so nicely--just as if it was a lady----"
"Did you, indeed! I have heard every word," said widow Hookham sternly. "You locked the door, or I would have had my ten nails in you long ago! Poor dear! What is a scum like you? And after all, what have you done, John Smith?"