"She's a fine like lass, yon," said Tom o' Dint.
An old man, iron gray, with a pair of mason's mallets swung front and back across his shoulders, stepped into the smithy.
"Middling weel, Job," answered the blacksmith; "and what's your errand now?"
"Cutting in the church-yard to-day, Job? Cold wark, eh?"
"Ey, auld Ritson's stone as they've putten over him."
The blacksmith tapped the peddler on the arm.
"Gubblum, shall I tell you what's a-matter with Paul?"
"Never you bother, John, it's die-spensy."
"It's fretting--that's it--fretting for his father."
"Fretting for his fiddlesticks!" shouted Dick, the miller; "Allan's dead this half a year."
"John's reet," said Job, the stone-cutter; "it is fretting."
Dick of the Syke got up off the iron rods.
"Because a young fellow has given you a job of wark to cut his father's headstone and tell a lie or two in letters half an inch deep and two shillings a dozen--does that show 'at he's fretting?"
"He didn't do nowt of the sort," said Job, hotly.
"Dusta mean as it were the other one--Hugh?" inquired the miller.
Dick of the Syke was not to be beaten for lack of the logic of circumlocution.
"Then what for do you say as Paul is weeping his insides out about his father, when he leaves it to other folks to put a bit of stone over him and a few scrats on it?"
"Because I do say so," said Job, conclusively.
"And maybe you've got your reasons, Job," said the blacksmith with insinuating suavity.
"Maybe I have," said the mason. Then softening, he added, "I don't mind telling you, neither. Yesterday morning when I went to wark I found Paul Ritson lying full length across his father's grave. His clothes were soaking with dew, and his face was as white as a Feb'uary mist, and stiff and set like, and his hair was frosted over same as a pane in the church window."
"He was like to take no note of me, but I gave him a shake, and called out, 'What, Mr. Paul! why, what, man! what's this?'"
"Say! Nowt. He get hissel' up--and gay stiff in the limbs he looked, to be sure--and walked off without a word."
Gubblum on the tool chest had removed his pipe from between his lips during the mason's narrative, and listened with a face of blank amazement.
"Weel, that is a stiffener," he said, drawing a long breath.