"Ay," said the Master grimly, "and 'twill be work till sundown, Hiram, if we're to make up for time lost."
Hiram opened his mouth wide. "What? Ye mean to get forrard wi' th' sheep-weshing? At after what we've gone through?"
Wayne nodded. "The lads here have come to learn how farm-work goes," he said; "and would'st thou teach them only how to idle through a summer's afternoon?"
"Nay, it beats me. Nay, your father war nowt, just now at all, to what ye are," murmured Hiram, scratching his rough head.—"Isn't it a tempting o' Providence, like, to wark i'stead o' giving praise that ye've come safe through all?" he added, under a happy inspiration.
Wayne laughed. "Work is praise, Hiram, as thou told'st me once, I mind, when I was idling as a lad. See how thy old lessons stick to me." He turned to Jose the shepherd. "Get yond Wildwater sheep gathered," he said; "they'll stray back to their own pastures if thou'rt not quick with them. And when the day's work is over, bring them to the Low Farm, and we'll put a Wayne owning-mark on their backs—for, by the Rood, I think we've won them fairly."
"Lord, Lord, I may be no drinker—but I could sup two quarts of ale, an' niver tak two breaths," said Hiram Hey forlornly.
Again Wayne laughed as he clapped him on the back. "Come to Marsh, Hiram—and all of you—at supper-time to-night; and ye shall have old October till ye swim, to drink to these stiff lads who plucked us out of trouble."
"That's sense—ay, he talks sense at last, does th' Maister," murmured Hiram. Then, bethinking him that it would never do, for his credit's sake, to show himself in anything more backward than the Master, he began forthwith to rate the farm-hands with something of his old-time vigour.
And soon the pinfolds on either hand were full again of bleating sheep, and Jose and his brother shepherds were scrubbing hard in each of the two pools, and a chance passer-by could not have told, save for broken faces here and there, that a half-hour since these leisurely moving folk had been fighting hand-to-hand for the honour of their house.
And so it chanced that Wayne, who might have been saved many a heart-ache had he ridden straight home to Marsh, as any man less obstinate would have done, was still at the washing-pool when his step-mother got back to Marsh. She had found Nell at the spinning-wheel, and had told her tale; and the girl had sat motionless for awhile, her head bowed over the yellow flax, her hands clenched tight together.