This smithy of Newlands filled the function which under a higher propitiousness of circumstance is answered by a club. Girded with his leather apron, his sleeves rolled tightly over his knotty arms, the smith, John Proudfoot, stood waiting for his heat. His striker, Geordie Moore, had fallen to at the bellows. On the tool chest sat Gubblum Oglethorpe, leisurely smoking. His pony was tied to the hasp of the gate. The miller, Dick of the Syke, sat on a pile of iron rods. Tom o' Dint, the little bow-legged fiddler and postman, was sharpening at the grindstone a penknife already worn obliquely to a point by many similar applications. "Nay, I can make nowt of him. He's a changed man for sure," said the blacksmith. Gubblum removed his pipe and muttered sententiously: "It's die-spensy, I tell thee." "Dandering and wandering about at all hours of the day and night," continued the blacksmith. "It's all die-spensy," repeated the peddler. "And as widderful and wizzent as a polecat nailed up on a barn door," said Tom o' Dint, lifting his grating knife from the grindstone and speaking with a voice as hoarse. "Eh, and as weak as watter with it," added the blacksmith. "His as was as strong as rum punch," rejoined the fiddler. "It's die-spensy, John--nowt else," said Gubblum. The miller broke in testily. "What's die-spensy?" "What ails Paul Ritson?" answered Gubblum. "Shaf on your balderdash," said Dick of the Syke; "die-spensying and die-spensying. You've no' but your die-spensy for everything. Tommy's rusty throat, and John's big toe, and lang Geordie's 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.