"Gimme your hand then, an' let auld scores be wiped off in this
shattering calamity. Us have differed wheer us could these twoscore
years; but theer mustn't be no more ill-will wi' me tremblin' on the lip
o' the graave."

"None at all; if 't wasn't for Widow Coomstock," said Gaffer Lezzard.
"You 'm tu pushing theer, an' I say it even now, for truth's truth,
though it be the last thing a man's ear holds."

"Break it to her gentle," said Billy, ignoring the other's criticism;
"she'm on in years, and have cast a kindly eye awver me since the early
sixties. My propositions never was more than agreeable conversation to
her, but it might have come. Tell her theer's a world beyond marriage
customs, an' us'll meet theer."

Old Lezzard showed a good deal of anger at this speech, but being in a
minority fell back and held his peace.

"Would 'e like to see passon, dear sawl?" asked Mr. Chapple, who walked
on Billy's left with his gun reversed, as though at a funeral.

"Me an' him be out, along o' rheumatics keeping me from the House of God
this month," said the sufferer, "but at a solemn death-bed hour like
this here, I'd soon see un as not. Ban't no gert odds, for I forgive all
mankind, and doan't feel no more malice than a bird in a tree."

"You're a silly old ass," burst out Grimbal roughly. "There's nothing
worth naming the matter with you, and you know it better than we do. The
Devil looks after his own, seemingly. Any other man would have been