‘Well indeed, then—a man must live somehow.’
‘You don’t seem to live by this trade, my friend,’ quoth Lancelot; ‘I cannot say it seems a prosperous business, by the look of your coat and trousers.’
‘That Tim Goddard stole all my clothes, and no good may they do him; last time as I went to gaol I gave them him to kep, and he went off for a navvy meantime; so there I am.’
‘If you will play with the dogs,’ quoth Tregarva, ‘you know what you will be bit by. Haven’t I warned you? Of course you won’t prosper: as you make your bed, so you must lie in it. The Lord can’t be expected to let those prosper that forget Him. What mercy would it be to you if He did let you prosper by setting snares all church-time, as you were last Sunday, instead of going to church?’
‘I say, Paul Tregarva, I’ve told you my mind about that afore. If I don’t do what I knows to be right and good already, there ain’t no use in me a damning myself all the deeper by going to church to hear more.’
‘God help you!’ quoth poor Paul.
‘Now, I say,’ quoth Crawy, with the air of a man who took the whole thing as a matter of course, no more to be repined at than the rain and wind—‘what be you a going to do with me this time? I do hope you won’t have me up to bench. ’Tain’t a month now as I’m out o’ prizzum along o’ they fir-toppings, and I should, you see—’ with a look up and down and round at the gay hay-meadows, and the fleet water, and the soft gleaming clouds, which to Lancelot seemed most pathetic,—‘I should like to ha’ a spell o’ fresh air, like, afore I goes in again.’
Tregarva stood over him and looked down at him, like some huge stately bloodhound on a trembling mangy cur. ‘Good heavens!’ thought Lancelot, as his eye wandered from the sad steadfast dignity of the one, to the dogged helpless misery of the other—‘can those two be really fellow-citizens? fellow-Christians?—even animals of the same species? Hard to believe!’
True, Lancelot; but to quote you against yourself, Bacon, or rather the instinct which taught Bacon, teaches you to discern the invisible common law under the deceitful phenomena of sense.
‘I must have those night-lines, Crawy,’ quoth Tregarva, at length.