"He lived by 'em. He said to me once that there were one or two sane men in the world who bought everything he liked to paint. 'Twas a very curious speech to my ear. And to be honest with you, I didn't like his pickshers--messy and half done to my eye--very different to the pickshers you see on grocers' almanacs, where everything, to the hairs on a horse's tail, be worked out to a miracle."
"Have 'e seen they pickshers that David got to Tavistock?" she asked.
Mr. Snell had seen them; but with a great and sudden access of cunning he replied in the negative. He expected her to invite him home to do so; but she did not.
A silence fell until they came to a clapper bridge of rather narrow dimensions.
"Shall I hand you over, miss, or would you rather go alone?" he inquired.
But Rhoda had crossed before he finished the question.
The church-tower seemed to draw his eyes like a magnet, and after further silence Mr. Snell began to talk about it again.
"'Tis a very wonderful and curious thing that the old prisoners made thicky pile," he said. "You might not know it, but so it was in ancient days."
"Very sad for them, because they was foreigners," ventured Rhoda.
"Exactly so. 'Twould be a very sad thing to have a wife and family and be shut away from them."