“You’ll do your duty, Nicholas; I’m sure of that,” answered the other, and Pinhey, sighing profoundly, went his way.
“There’s no fool like a pious fool,” said Trood scornfully, “and I hope to Heaven you’ll let Kellock stop. Beatermen, like Dingle, are got again, but such vatmen as Jordan Kellock are not.”
“I know that mighty well, Ernest, and just for that reason we must look sharp into it and not let self-interest bend us into anything wrong. With some men I’d fire them on a job like this and have no more words about it; but Kellock’s different. He’s honourable, so far as my experience goes, and scrupulous in small things—a straight man every way. He has himself well in hand and he’s got ambitions. He would hardly have done such a grave thing as this on foolish impulse. But I don’t want to be prejudiced for him any more than against him. I’ll leave it till I’ve heard Ned.”
“And don’t you let Dingle turn you from him,” begged Ernest. “It stands to reason that Dingle won’t have much good to say of him. Whatever he feels in secret, he must curse Kellock openly. In my opinion you ought to hear Kellock also on his own defence, before you sack him.”
“Perhaps I ought; and perhaps I will,” answered the other. “I shan’t lose Kellock if it’s in right and reason to keep him. Send Ned to me after dinner at one o’clock.”
Below Bow Bridge a row of narrow-headed stepping-stones are regularly placed across the river with their noses pointing up stream. The current sets thin lines of light trickling away, where the stones break its surface. Above the crossing, trees overhang the water and throw shadows to break the white sheen of stickles and the flash of foam; beneath the stepping-stones the channel widens and flows forward to the estuary. A dead tree had fallen here and upon one bough, overhanging a still pool, sat a kingfisher, like a spark of blue fire against the grey and umber colours spread round him. Beyond, where the stream bent eastward, there rose a fir-clad hill, and at water’s brink stood cottages with irregular thatched roofs. Their white-washed faces represented the highest light of the scene and were a centre and focus for that rural picture.
Beside the stepping-stones Ned Dingle sat and smoked his pipe. The water at his feet had run fine after a spell of dry weather, and there was only the motion of the lazy stream, broken now and then by a small fish. White ducks paddled close by in a shallow, where the afternoon sunshine turned the water to liquid amber and made the birds golden bright.
