Two of the peasants loitered considerably behind the rest, seemingly engrossed by a conversation too interesting or too important for the ears of their companions. The elder of the speakers was clad in a coarse woollen doublet; a belt of untanned leather girt his form; and on his head was a cap of grey felt, without either rim or band. His gait was heavy and slouching. Strong, tall, and muscular, he stooped considerably; but less through age and infirmity than from the laborious nature of his occupations. His companion, younger and more vivacious, was distinguished by a goodly and well-thriven hump, and by that fulness and projection of the chest which usually characterise this species of deformity. His long arms nearly trailed to the ground as he walked; huge and sprawling, they seemed to have been originally intended as an attachment to a frame of much more gigantic proportions. His face had that peculiar form and expression which always, more or less, accompany this kind of malformation. Wide, large, angular; the chin sharp and projecting, supported on the breast; the whole head scarcely rivalling the shoulders in height and obliquity. His disposition was evidently wayward and irascible, and a keen satirical humour lurked in every line of his pallid visage; generally at war with his species, and ready to act on the defensive; snarling whenever he was approached, and always anticipating gibe and insult from his fellows.
"Weary, weary,—ay, as a tom-fool at a holiday feast," said the hunchback to his companion. "Spade and axe have I lifted these twenty years, and what the better am I o' the labour? A groat's worth of wit is worth a pound o' sweat,' as my dame says. I'll turn pedlar some o' these days, and lie, and cheat, and sell."
"Ay, Gregory," interrupted the other, "thee'd sell thy own paws, if so be they'd fetch a groat i' the market; but then, I warrant, the dame at the hall would lack her henchman at the churn."
"Tut! I care for nought living but my worthless carcase," replied the hunchback, surveying his own person. "Why
should I? there's nought living that cares for me. Sure as fate, if a' waur dead beside, we'd ha' curran' baws i' the pot every day. What a murrain is it to this hungry maw whether Ned Talbot, or Joe Tempest, or any other knave o' the pack, tumbles into his berth, or is put to bed wi' the shovel, a day sooner or later. He maun budge some time. Faugh! how I hate your whining—your cat-a-whisker'd faces, purring and mewling, while parson Pudsay says grace over the cold carrion; he cares not if it waur hash'd and stew'd i' purgatory, so that he gets the shrift-money. Out upon't, Ralph, out upon it! this mattock should delve a' the graves i' the parish, if I could get a tester more i' my fist."
"Thou murdering tyke! wouldst dig my grave?"
"Ay," shouted Gregory with a grin, displaying a huge double crescent of white teeth, portals to a gulf, grim, hideous, and insatiable; "ay, for St Peter's penny."
"And leave me to knock at the gate, and never a doit to pay the porter?"
"Thou shouldst cry and howl till doomsday, though my pouch had the keeping of a whole congregation of angels.
"Keep out o' my way, cub—unlicked brute!" cried the infuriate Ralph; "keep back, I say, or I may send thee first on thine errand to St Peter. Take that, knave, and"—