“That’s reasonable and business-like,” he said. “I wouldn’t have you suffer for lost time, which is part of your living. I’ll give you ten pounds for the stone, Will, and that should more than pay for your time and for the new post.”
He glanced into the other’s face and instantly saw his error. The farmer’s countenance clouded and his features darkened until he looked like an angry Redskin. His eyes glinted steel-bright under a ferocious frown; the squareness of his jaw became much marked.
“You dare to say that, do’e? An’ me as good a man, an’ better, than you or your brother either! Money—you remind me I’m—Theer! You can go to blue, blazin’ hell for your granite crosses—that’s wheer you can go—you or any other poking, prying pelican! Offer money to me, would ’e? Who be you, or any other man, to offer me money for wasted time? As if I was a road scavenger or another man’s servant! God’s truth! you forget who you’m talkin’ to!”
“This is to purposely misunderstand me, Blanchard. I never, never, meant any such thing. Am I one to gratuitously insult or offend another? Typical this! Your cursed temper it is that keeps you back in the world and makes a failure of you,” answered the student of stones, his own temper nearly lost under exceptional provocation.
“Who says I be a failure?” roared Will in return. “What do you know, you grey, dreamin’ fule, as to whether I’m successful or not so? Get you gone off my land or—”
“I’ll go, and readily enough. I believe you’re mad. That’s the conclusion I’m reluctantly driven to—mad. But don’t for an instant imagine your lunatic stupidity is going to stand between the world and this discovery, because it isn’t.”
He strapped on his satchel, picked up his stick, put his hat on straight, and prepared to depart, breathing hard.
“Go,” snorted Will; “go to your auld stones—they ’m the awnly fit comp’ny for ’e. Bruise your silly shins against ’em, an’ ax ’em if a moorman’s in the right or wrong to paart wi’ his gate-post to the fust fule as wants it!”
Martin Grimbal strode off without replying, and Will, in a sort of grim good-humour at this victory, returned to milking his cows. The encounter, for some obscure reason, restored him to amiability. He reviewed his own dismal part in it with considerable satisfaction, and, after going indoors and eating a remarkably good breakfast, he lighted his pipe and, in the most benignant of moods, went out with a horse and cart to gather withered fern.