"Fiddlestick-end! I put the clod there myself. 'Tis lead!"
"Lead?"
"Ay, naybours all," broke in Farmer Tresidder, his bald head bedewed with sweat, "I don't want to abash 'ee, Lord knows; but 'tis trew as doom that I be a passing well-to-do chap. I shudn' wonder now"—and here he embraced the company with a smile, half pompous and half timid— "I shudn' wonder if ye was to see me trottin' to Parlyment House in a gilded coach afore Michaelmas—I be so tremenjous rich, by all accounts."
"You'll excoose my sayin' it, Farmer," spoke up Old Zeb out of the awed silence that followed, "for doubtless I may be thick o' hearin', but did I, or did I not, catch 'ee alludin' to a windfall o' wealth?"
"You did."
"You'll excoose me sayin' it, Farmer; but was it soberly or pleasantly, honest creed or light lips, down-right or random, 'out o' the heart the mouth speaketh' or wantonly and in round figgers, as it might happen to a man filled with meat and wine?"
"'Twas the cold trewth."
"By what slice o' fortune?"
"By a mine, as you might put it: or, as between man an' man, by a mine o' lead."
"Farmer, you're either a born liar or the darlin' o' luck."