"There's red hair an' there's red hair," put in the other, weightily. "Same as there's cheese an' cheese; but there's one sort o' red thatch that niver yet spelt owt but foxiness an' double-dealing."
"That's true, for I've noticed it myseln. Black hair for honest, says I, an' red for a man that'll do owt."
"Leet hair, thin blood—that's what I war telled. Ay, sure, ye can niver trust yond sort o' thatch; an' all th' Ratcliffes hev it, saving Mistress Janet."
"Mistress Janet's is black as sloes, an' she hes a staunch heart of her own to match," broke in Nanny, who rarely stopped to praise. "But then she might be a Wayne, an' I've allus wondered how she came to be born of a Ratcliffe stock. Eh, but I wonder aht yond chap is saying to Witherlee! My man hes getten a closish tongue, Lord be thanked, or he mud easy say summat that wod stick i' Ratcliffe's gizzard."
The Sexton had been pottering up and down the graveyard all this while. And now he had sat him down on the edge of a grave, and filled his pipe and fallen into one of the musing fits which were the chief joy of his life. He was out of place in the world of living men and women, was Witherlee, and he knew it; but here he was at home, and the folk underground were full in sympathy with the dour, clear-sighted philosophy which pick and spade had taught him.
"There's comfort i' a bit o' bacca—though, Lord knows, 'twill be all one, bacca or no bacca, by and by," he muttered, pulling out his tinder-box. "We brought nowt into th' world, an' we tak nowt out, as Parson says at buryings—no, not so mich as an old clay pipe to keep us warm under sod."
His pipe well going, he let his eyes rove through the thin trail of smoke until they rested on the vault of the Waynes of Marsh. A shadowy smile wrinkled his mouth; he was thinking of what had chanced here not twelve hours agone, and piecing the fight together, stroke by stroke, as he would have it be if it were to be fought out again.
"So thou'rt here, Witherlee! Peste, man, thou sittest so grey and still that I mistook thee for one of thy own gravestones," said Ratcliffe's voice at his elbow.
The Sexton came slowly out of his dreams. "Good-day to ye, Maister. Th' wind blows warm at after last neet's bluster," he said.
"It will blow cold again—after what was done here last night," answered Ratcliffe sourly. "Thou hast heard, I take it, that my brother was done to death here? I am come to bid thee dig a grave for him, the burying will be on Monday, likely."