His eyes seemed to catch fire, and he turned to Ted almost threateningly, "And you don't understand! Will you understand, I wonder, when I tell you that these quarries, like many another, have been in the hands of speculators from the very beginning? Some one who knew the slate was bad took to himself others who knew it also, and between them they floated a company. When the money had gone, some other rascal bought the bankrupt stock and started another company, and another, and another. And all the time, these workmen whom you commiserate were hewing and splitting and taking their wages, for what? For money, only for money! What was it to them that the slate was bad, that their labour was wasted and vain? They got their money. And now they wonder because, when the lease of the last company was up, I stepped in and said 'No.' This sham shan't go on. I claim my right, and I won't be bribed by anybody." He spoke almost passionately, then laughed, and, with a brief "I beg your pardon; these things irritate me," struck up a shady footpath which led over the hill. "I don't exactly see how it could have been done," remarked Ted argumentatively. "If they went bankrupt they must have had a valuator, and then----" "I've no doubt they had," broke in Ned impatiently, "but what I tell you is the long and short of it." "Besides, I don't consider the workman is to be blamed at all," argued Ted. "So long as he does his work fairly and gets his pay for doing that work, no one has a right to find fault with him. Then think of the women and children." Aura, whose face had grown keen over the discussion, looked swiftly at Ned, awaiting his answer. He, in one of his worst moods, gave it unhesitatingly: "My dear fellow, what is the use of breeding up a race of thieves and swindlers?" With that he bent himself to take the hill at a gallop, leaving those two agreeing as to the women and children, agreeing also in a thousand superficial likings and dislikings born of youth, high spirits, and no small lack of thought. But at a sharp turn amid the tumbled débris, they overtook Lord Blackborough opposed to a small boy seated disconsolately on the ground in a puddle of fresh milk, dotted with the remains of a broken jug, while an ill-looking collie dog yapped from the shelter of a more than usually large block of worthless slate. "It wasn't my fault," explained Ned ruefully. "That brute of a dog upset him, trying to bark and run away at the same time." The small boy, having now realised his misfortune, was blubbering in Welsh. "I don't understand what he is saying," said Aura, looking up at Ted, after bending over the urchin with English consolation. "Do you?" He shook his head. "That is the worst of wild Wales; one can't be compassionate." Ned looked at them a trifle contemptuously.