"No: nor likely to." Young Seth halted. If he had not found a damsel it was not for lack of good looks. He had a face for a Raphael to paint; the face of a Stephen or a Sebastian; gloomed over just now, as he halted with his shoulders to the sunset. "I can't think o' such things in these times, Mr Obed."
"Nor me," said the farmer's son, discovering that his pipe was out and feeling in his pocket for a box of matches.
"There's no hurry for you, Mr Obed." "Isn't there? . . . Well, I suppose not, thank goodness! Here, take a fill o' baccy an' tell me what you think of it. I mean, o' course"—with a jerk of his hand towards the camp—"what you think o' that there?"
"I wish I could tell 'ee offhand," answered Seth after a pause, carefully filling his pipe. "I was puzzlin' it over as I came along."
"I see nothing to puzzle, for a man placed as you be," said Obed, drawing hard on his pipe. "If you had a father and a mother, now, both draggin' hard on your coat-tails—My God!" he broke off, staring at the sappers moving on the hillside. "What wouldn't I give to be like any o' those?"
"If you feel it like that," Seth encouraged him, "the way's plain, surely? Father nor mother—no, nor wife nor child, if I had 'em— could hinder me."
"What hinders you then, lucky man?" Seth smoked for a while in silence. "I don't think as I'd answer 'ee," he said at length quietly, "if I thought my answerin' would carry weight in your mind. You to call me lucky!—when your way's clear, and all you want is the will."
"We'll pass that," said Obed. "To you, that have none at home to hinder, ben't the way clear?"
"Since you ask me, 'tis not; or if clear, clear contrary."
"How should that be, in God's name?"