He shook his head.
“Nobody shall ever know that you told me.”
He took a little hook he was forging and made a motion with it as if I were a stalk of wheat and he wanted to draw me to him.
“Lad,” he said, “man who tells on his mate aren’t a man no longer. I am a man.”
We stood looking at each other for some time, and then he said in his rough way:
“It aren’t no doing o’ mine, lad, and I don’t like it. It aren’t manly. One o’ the mesters did owt to me as I didn’t like I’d go up to him and ask him to tek off his coat like a man and feight it out, or else I’d go away; but man can’t do as he likes i’ Arrowfield. He has to do what trade likes.”
“And it was the trade who threw our bands away, and tried to blow us up, and half-poisoned me and Piter.”
“Hah!” he said with a sigh. “That’s it, lad.”
“Ah, well, I didn’t expect you’d tell me, Pannell,” I said, smiling.
“You see I can’t, my lad. Now can I?”