"Fiddlestick-end! I put the clod there myself. 'Tis _lead!_"

"Lead?"

"Ay, naybours all," broke in Farmer Tresidder, his bald head bedewed
with sweat, "I don't want to abash 'ee, Lord knows; but 'tis trew as
doom that I be a passing well-to-do chap. I shudn' wonder now"--and
here he embraced the company with a smile, half pompous and half timid--
"I shudn' wonder if ye was to see me trottin' to Parlyment House in a
gilded coach afore Michaelmas--I be so tremenjous rich, by all
accounts."

"You'll excoose my sayin' it, Farmer," spoke up Old Zeb out of the awed
silence that followed, "for doubtless I may be thick o' hearin', but did
I, or did I not, catch 'ee alludin' to a windfall o' wealth?"

"You did."

"You'll excoose me sayin' it, Farmer; but was it soberly or pleasantly,
honest creed or light lips, down-right or random, 'out o' the heart the
mouth speaketh' or wantonly and in round figgers, as it might happen to
a man filled with meat and wine?"

"'Twas the cold trewth."

"By what slice o' fortune?"

"By a mine, as you might put it: or, as between man an' man, by a mine
o' lead."