Humph--humph! The pigs were thrusting their noses into a heap of rubbish piled up against the wall, and covered with docks and nettles. Mr Hedges leant a little farther over the coping, and with the end of his stick rubbed the back of the fattest, producing divers grunts of satisfaction. This operation seemed to give equal pleasure to the man and the animal. "Thirteen score," said Ruck sententiously, referring to the weight of the said pig. "Mebbe a bit more, you,"--two farmers could by no possibility agree on the weight of an animal. "Folk never used to think nothing of a peg till a' were nigh on twenty score. But this generation be nice in bacon, and likes a wafer rasher as shrivels up dry without a lick of grease." "It be a spectacle to see the chaps in the Lunnon eating-houses pick over their plates," said Ruck. "Such a waste of good vittels!" "There'll be a judgment on it some day." The click of the double wicket-gates--double, to keep other people's sheep out and the rector's sheep in--now began to sound more frequently, as the congregation gathered by twos and threes, coming up the various footpaths that led across the fields. Very few entered the church--most hanging about and forming little groups as their acquaintances came up. The boys stole away from their gossiping parents, and got together where a projecting buttress and several high square tombs formed a recess and hid their proceedings. A broad sunken slab just there was level with the turf; the grass grew over at the edges. They had scraped away the moss that covered it; the inscription had long since disappeared, except the figure 7, a remnant of the date. Something like the chink of coppers on stone might have been heard now and then, when there was a lull in their chatter. Dill--dill! "Squire Thorpe got visitors, yent a'?" asked Hedges, perfectly well aware of the fact, but desirous of learning something else, and getting at it sideways, as country folk will. "Aw; that tall fellow, Geoffrey Newton, and Val Browne, as have set up the training-stables." "Warn he'll want some hay?" This was a leading question, and Hedges rubbed away at the pig to appear innocently unconcerned. "I sold his trainer eighty ton o' clauver," said Ruck. "A' be a gentleman, every inch of un." "Stiffish price, you?" "Five pound ten." Whew! "Ay, ay; but it be five mile to cart it; and a nation bad road." "What's that long chap doing at Squire's? He 'as been to Australia." "A' be goin' to larn farming." "Larn farming!" Intense contempt. "A' be down to Greene Ferne a' studying pretty often," said Ruck, with a wink and a broad grin. "Wimmen," said Hedges, giving an extra hard scrape at the pig, who responded Humph--humph! "Wimmen," repeated Ruck still more emphatically.