“They’ve stole my flail,” cried the Gaffer.
“Why, there it is, under that straw,” said Will.
“Oh, ay. But there was more logs, Oi’ll goo bail. Drat ’em, can’t they chop for theirselves? It’ll be that Uncle Lilliwhyte.”
“Oh, but he’s only too honest,” said Will incautiously.
“There ain’t nobody honest,” barked the Gaffer.
“Not he. ’Twas Jinny told him to send the adder. He’d ha’ kept your sixpence and let you whistle for your sarpint. But next time you want an adder, you come to me.”
“Do you sell ’em too?” he murmured, surprised.
His spectacles glowed strangely. “Read your Bible, young man—Dan is an adder in the path, what biteth the horse’s heels, so that the rider should fall backwards—that’s the blessing of Jacob—and let no man try to ride roughshod over the likes o’ me.”
Will shrank back before the passion of his words. Indeed in that gloomy old barn he began to feel a bit nervous.
“I’ve brought a note for Jinny,” he said hastily. “Will you give it to her?”
The old man took the cocked-hat. “Mr. Daniel Quarles!” he read slowly. “But it’s for _me_!”
Will’s blush was now papaverous. “No—no!” he stammered. It was a conjuncture he had not foreseen.
The fire in the old eye leapt up at the contradiction, shot through the spectacles. “Plain as a pikestaff—Mr. Daniel Quarles! And then you has the imperence to say there ain’t no thieves. But ye can’t bamboozle me. Oi could read afore you could woipe your nose with a muckinger, ay, and my feyther afore me. Carriers ha’ we been for over a hundred year, and my big brother Sidrach he had his own pack-horses loaded up with waluable stuff and writ me a piece ten year ago come haysel, sayin’ as he hoped Oi should jarney to see him, and please God Oi will, he gittin’ old.”
“But where is he?” asked Will, glad that the Gaffer’s monologue had drifted from its angry beginning.
“Babylon?” gasped Will, whose recent theological excursions had made him almost at home in that purpureal city.
“That’s my nickname for Che’msford, chuck-full o’ lewdness and Church-folk. But Oi’ve been meanin’ to goo and look Sidrach up and hear all about his travels, he bein’ a rare one for adwentures, but somehow what with my carryin’ work and one thing and the tother my days fly by—like the Book says—swifter than a weaver’s shuttle. Happen lucky, though, Oi’ll git over there to-year.”