"What's that you're sayin'?"
"I knowed 'ee better. First along—" the old man spoke as if with a painful effort of memory—"first along, to be sure, I reckined you might ha' come an' spoke a word o' comfort; not that speakin' comfort could ha' done any good, an' so I excused 'ee."
"You excused me? Word of comfort! Word of comf—" The Elder gasped for a moment, his mouth opening and shutting without sound. "An' what about my seventy-five pounds?—all lost to me through your not keepin' up the insurance!"
"Ay," assented old Tregenza. "Ay, to be sure. Terrible careless, that was."
For a moment the Elder felt tempted to strike him. "Look here," he said, tapping his stick sharply on the floor; "as it happens, I didn' come here to lose my temper nor to talk about your conduct—leastways, not that part of it. 'Tis about your granddaughter. She've been stealin' my wood."
"Liz?"
"Yes; I caught her in my yard at nine o'clock last night. No mistakin' what she was after. There, in the dark—she was stealin' my wood."
"What sort o' wood?"
"Man alive! Does it matter what sort o' wood, when I tell you the child was thievin'. You encourage her to play truant, defyin' the law; an' now she's doin' what'll bring her to Bodmin Gaol, as sure as fate. A child scarce over thirteen—an' you're makin' a gaol-bird o' her! The Lord knows, Sam Tregenza, I think badly enough of you, but will you stand there an' tell me 'tis no odds to you that your grandchild's a thief?"
"Liz wouldn' steal your wood, nor nobody's-else's, unless some person had put her up to it," answered the old man, knitting his brows to which the sawdust still adhered. "Come to think, now, the maid told me the other day that you'd been speakin' to her, sayin' that minchin' from school was robbin' the public, an' she'd do honester to be stealin' it from you than pickin' it up along the foreshore durin' school-hours. You may depend that's what put it into her head. She's a very well-meanin' child."