“I don’t know nowt, I tell ’ee,” he cried angrily. “Such friends as we’ve been, Mester Jacob, and you to want to get me into a scrarp.”
“Why, Gentles!” I cried. “If you know, why don’t you speak out like a man?”
“’Cause I’m a man o’ peace, Mester Jacob, and don’t want to harm nobody, and I don’t want nobody to harm me. Nay, I know nowt at all.”
“Well, I think you are a contemptible coward, Gentles,” I said warmly. “You’re taking my uncles’ money and working on their premises, and though you know who has been base enough to injure them you are not man enough to speak.”
“Now don’t—don’t—don’t, my lad,” he cried in a hoarse whisper. “Such friends as we’ve been too, and you go on like that. I tell ’ee I’m a man of peace, and I don’t know nowt at all. On’y give me my grinstone and something to grind—that’s all I want.”
“And to see our place blown up and the bands destroyed. There, I’m ashamed of you, Gentles,” I cried.
“But you’ll be friends?” he said; and there were tears in his eyes.
“Friends! How can I be friends,” I cried, “with a man like you?”
“Oh dear, oh dear!” I heard him groan as I left the workshop; and going to Piter’s kennel I took off his collar and led him down to the dam to give him a swim.
He was a capital dog for the water, and thoroughly enjoyed a splash, so that before the men came back he had had a swim, shaken himself, and was stretched out in the sunshine under the wall drying himself, when, as I stooped to pat him, I noticed something about the wall that made me look higher in a hurried way, and then at the top, and turn off directly.