Annie shuddered again.
"Oh no, no, I dursn't"
"Well, I will," said her companion. "I know Mr. Hayes'll let me.—Won't you now, Mr. Hayes?"
The big man who sat on the edge of the temporary woodwork that was erected at the mouth of the well turned a good-natured, sunburnt visage towards her.
"All right, my gal! come on, I'll hold ye. They've got on well to-day. They're down a sight deeper than last time you looked."
The man held back the ropes that hung from a windlass over the top, and the girl stooped over the brink. She could see the heads of both men down at what appeared to her an unfathomable depth. She uttered a little cry of dismay. The earth had been getting softer and easier to dig into for the last two days and they had made considerable progress. Martin looked up as the shadow cast by the girl's head and shoulders darkened the pit a little.
"Hullo! That's you, my gal, is it? Well, I'm coming. I want my fourses bad, I can tell you."
"Well, come on up then, father; and tell Mr. Chapman his wife have been waitin' for him ever so long, and she've got to go home directly, to give the children their teas."
"All right, then.—You go up first, Tom." And nothing loath, Tom put his foot into the loop, and gripping the rope with both hands was soon drawn up.
"My eye, it is hot up here," he said, as half blinded by the sun he made his way to the tent. Martin soon followed, and the women unpacked their baskets. Annie had brought Tom a bottle of his favourite fromerty and a large harvest-bun. Martin liked tea, so his daughter had a pot full of it rolled up in an old shawl to keep it hot, for Martin held that hot tea is the most cooling of drinks. "Drinkin' cold things when you're hot only makes you all the hotter!" Well, every one to his taste, and the big man preferred beer. He was a stranger, and the same man who had made such cruel remarks on Geo Lummis's muscles.