“Hush!” he whispered sharply; “some one may hear again.”
I stared at the great swarthy fellow, for he looked sallow and seared, and it seemed, so strange to me that, while I only felt annoyance, he should be alarmed.
“Why, Pannell,” I cried, “what’s the matter?”
“Best keep a still tongue,” he said in a whisper. “You never know who may hear you.”
“I don’t care who hears me. It was a coward and a scoundrel who cut our bands, and I should like to tell him so to his face.”
“Howd thee tongue, I say,” he cried, hammering away at his anvil, to drown my words in noise. “What did I tell thee?”
“That some one might hear me. Well, let him. Why, Pannell, you look as if you had done it yourself. It wasn’t you, was it?”
He turned upon me quite fiercely, hammer in hand, making me think about Wat Tyler and the tax-gatherer; but he did not strike me: he brought his hammer down upon the anvil with a loud clang.
“Nay,” he said; “I nivver touched no bands. It warn’t my wuck.”
“Well, I never thought it was,” I said. “You don’t look the sort of man who would be a coward.”