Another uneasy movement among the men.
"Burn my body! and what's the women to me?" said Drayton.
"Nay, nowt," answered the blacksmith. "Your awn wife seems nowdays powerful keen for your company."
Drayton's eyes were red, but the fire died out of them in an instant. He stepped up to the blacksmith and held out his hand.
"You've licked me," he said, in another tone, "but I ain't the man to keep spite, I ain't; so come along, old fence, and let's wet it."
"That's weel said," put in Tommy Lowthwaite, the landlord.
"It's no'but fair," said Dick, the miller.
"He's a reet sort, after all," said Job, the mason.
"He's his awn fadder's son, is Paul Ritson," said Tom o' Dint.
In two minutes more the soiled company were trampling knee-deep through rank beds of rushes on their way to the other side of the dale. They stopped a few yards from a pit shaft with its headgear and wheel.