broken nose, as
Giles Raisley gave him a' Saturday neet at the Pack Horse--it's all
die-spensy."

The miller was a blusterous fellow, who could swear in lusty anger and
laugh in boisterous sport in a single breath.

Gubblum puffed placidly.

"It is die-spensy. I know it by exper'ence," he observed, persistently.

The blacksmith's little eyes twinkled mischievously.

"To be sure you do, Gubblum. You had it bad the day you crossed in the
packet from Whitehebben. That was die-spensy--a cute bout too."

"I've heard as it were amazing rough on the watter that day," said Tom,
in a pause of the wheel, glancing up knowingly at the blacksmith.

"Heard, had you? Must have been tolerable deaf else. Rough? Why, them do
say as the packet were wrecked, and only two planks saved. Gubblum was
washed ashore cross-legged on one of them, and his pack on the other."

The long, labored breathings of the bellows ended, the iron was thrown
white hot out of the glowing coals on to the anvil, and the clank of the
hand-hammer and thud of the sledge were all that could be heard. Then
the iron cooled, and was lifted back into the palpitating blaze. The
blacksmith stepped to the door, wiped his streaming forehead with one
hand and waved the other to the parson plowing in the opposite field.

"A canny morning, Mr. Christian," he shouted. "Bad luck for the parson's
young lady, anyhow--her sweetheart is none to keen for the wedding," he
said, turning again to the fire.

"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.

"How fend ye, John?" he said.

"Middling weel, Job," answered the blacksmith; "and what's your errand
now?"

"A chisel or two for tempering."

"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