h--eh, Will?"

"Bother your rot," answered the other coldly, and quite unimpassioned
before Martin's eloquence. "You doubted my judgment not long since and
said hard things and bad things; now I take leave to doubt yours. How do
'e knaw this here 's a cross any more than t' other post the gate hangs
on?"

Martin, recalled to reality and the presence of a man till then
unfriendly, blushed and shrank into himself a little. His voice showed
that he suffered pain.

"I read granite as you read sheep and soil and a crop ripening above
ground or below--it's my business," he explained, not without
constraint, while the enthusiasm died away out of his voice and the fire
from his face. "See now, Will, try and follow me. Note these very faint
lines, where the green moss takes the place of the lichen. These are
fretted grooves--you can trace them to the earth, and on a 'rubbing,' as
we call it, they would be plainer still. They indicate to me incisions
down the sides of a cross-shaft. They are all that many years of
weathering have left. Look at the shape too: the stone grows slightly
thinner every way towards the ground. What is hidden we can't say yet,
but I pray that the arms may be at least still indicated. You see it is
the base sticking into the air, and more's the pity, a part has gone,
for I can trace the incisions to the top. God knows the past history of
it, but--"

"Perhaps He do and perhaps He doan't," interrupted the farmer. "Perhaps
it weer a cross an' perhaps it weern't; anyway it's my gate-post now,
an' as to diggin' it up, you may be surprised to knaw it, Martin
Grimbal, but I'll see you damned fust! I'm weary of all this bunkum
'bout auld stones an' circles an' the rest; I'm sick an' tired o'
leavin' my work a hunderd times in summer months to shaw gaping fules
from Lunnon an' Lard knaws wheer, them roundy-poundies 'pon my land.
'Tis all rot, as every moorman knaws; yet you an' such as you screams if
us dares to put a finger to the stone nowadays. Ban't the granite ours
under Venwell? You knaw it is; an' because dead-an'-gone folk,
half-monkeys belike, fashioned their homes an' holes out of it, be that
any cause why it shouldn't be handled to-day? They've had their use of
it; now 'tis our turn; an 'tis awnly such as you be, as comes here in
shining summer, when the land puts on a lying faace, as though it didn't
knaw weather an' winter--'tis awnly such as you must cry out against us
of the soil if we dares to