“Man alive! A marvel! Look here—to think I have passed this stone a hundred times and never noticed!”
He rose, brushed his muddy knees, still gazing at the gate-post, then took a trowel from his bag and began to cut away the turf about the base of it.
“Let that bide!” called out the master sharply. “What be ’bout, delving theer?”
“I forgot you didn’t know. I was coming to see you on my way to the Moor. I wanted a drink and a handshake. We mustn’t be enemies, and I’m heartily sorry for what I said—heartily. But here’s a fitting object to build new friendship on. I just caught sight of the incisions through a fortunate gleam of early morning light. Come this side and see for yourself. To think you had what a moorman would reckon good fortune at your gate and never guessed it!”
“Fortune at my gate? Wheer to? I aint heard nothin’ of it.”
“Here, man, here! D’ you see this post?”
“Not bein’ blind, I do.”
“Yet you were blind, and so was I. There ’s excuse for you—none for me. It’s a cross! Yes, a priceless old Christian cross, buried here head downward by some profane soul in the distant past, who found it of size and shape to make a gate-post. They are common enough in Cornwall, but very rare in Devon. It’s a great—a remarkable discovery in fact, and I’m right glad I found it on your threshold; for we may be friends again beside this symbol fittingly enough—eh, Will?”
“Bother your rot,” answered the other coldly, and quite unimpassioned before Martin’s eloquence. “You doubted my judgment not long since and said hard things and bad things; now I take leave to doubt yours. How do ’e knaw this here ’s a cross any more than t’ other post the gate hangs on?”
Martin, recalled to reality and the presence of a man till then unfriendly, blushed and shrank into himself a little. His voice showed that he suffered pain.