"That shows he can change his own mind; it don't show the likes of you can change it for him. Here he comes, anyway, an' what I say, I say: that thicky cross-steps would make a very tidy bridge, an' save a week's work."
"You'd touch that cross!" gasped Smallridge. "You—a foreigner from Exeter!"
"Us have a right to it."
"No man have a right to a stone once 'tis fashioned into a cross; an' if you was a Christian 'stead of a crook-backed heathen, you'd know it an' if a finger be laid against it, I'd not give a straw for the future of any man amongst us," cried Uncle Smallridge, rising to his feet in great agitation.
"Fright childer with your twaddle, not a growed-up soul," answered Kekewich. "But no call to shake your jaw an' bristle up your old mane like that. My word ban't law. Here the master cometh, an' you'm like to hear more than will be stomachable when he sees what you've been doing."
"The fault was mine, and I'll take the blame," answered Richard Beer. "You men bide quiet an' let his anger fall upon me."
Grace and Norcot, not desiring to see the labourers' discomfiture, rode away, and a moment later Maurice Malherb arrived upon the scene. His strong face, scarred with passion uncontrolled, grew dark again now, and the kindly look vanished from his eyes as the customary storm-cloud of black eyebrow settled upon them.
"What are you doing? What means this digging?" he asked.
"'Tis me as done it, your honour," answered Beer. "I thought as a ford——"
"A ford! What business have you to dare to think? I said a bridge."