"Where is your Master?" snapped the other. "'Tis a poor farmer lies abed while his hinds play."
Hiram's glance was a quick one this time, quenched under his rough grey eyebrows as soon as given. "So ye thowt he'd be here this morn?" he said. "Nay, he's noan a lie-abed, isn't th' Maister, but he's getten summat else to do."
"Has he? And what might that be?" said Red Ratcliffe softly.
"Shall I tell him?" muttered Hiram, half audibly. Then, after a pause of seeming doubt, "He's cutting grass i' th' Low Meadow," he said.
"Ay, for sure. Wildwater land ligs cold, an' ye're late wi' crops up yonder; but th' grass lower dahn is running so to seed that it war no use letting it bide a day longer. It 'ull be poor hay as 'tis, an' all along o' this unchristian weather."
"So he'll not come to the sheep-washing?" broke in Red Ratcliffe, with a glance at his fellows.
"I've telled ye so," said Hiram, "an' telling ye twice willun't better a straight tale."
"I'm thinking Hiram hes a soft spot i' his heart for young Maister; I've niver knawn him tell so thick a lee afore," muttered shepherd Jose, as he went forward with his work.
Red Ratcliffe, looking down the streamway and wondering whether it were worth while to insist on his claim to the pool, laughed suddenly and jerked his bridle-hand in the direction of a horseman who had turned the bend of the track below and jumped the stream.
"Shameless Wayne will come to the washing after all," he said, and waited, stiff and quiet in the saddle, till Wayne of Marsh should cross the half-mile that intervened.
"I war mista'en, seemingly. Th' Maister mun hev crossed straight fro' th' grass-cutting," said Hiram, putting a bold face on it to hide a sinking heart.
The old man turned his back on the Ratcliffes, and his face to the upcoming horseman, whose head was thrust low upon his shoulders as if some gloomy trend of thought were dulling him to all sights and sounds of this fair June day.
"I framed weel, an' I could do no more," he said to himself; "but sakes, why couldn't he hev bided a while longer? Th' Ratcliffes 'ud hev been off to th' Low Meadow i' a twinkling, if I knaw owt.--What's to be done, like? He's a wick un to fight, is th' Maister, but there's seven o' these clever Dicks fro' Wildwater, an' that's longish odds."