“Well, Oi can’t inwoite you in here—’tis too mucky.” He gave Methusalem’s tail a final flick with the brush. “And it’s blowin’ up for rine. We’ll goo into the barn.” And he led the way imperiously round by a great and ramifying apple-tree that hid a little black door secured by a padlock and infinite knots of string. “One has to be witty,” he commented, patiently undoing the complications, “with so many thieves about to steal my dole hay.” Will had not heard of these thieves, and thought Little Bradmarsh must be changed indeed, but he waited silently, wondering what to do with his note. And as he stood thus, there came from the cottage the sound of a girl’s singing. Fortunately it was not satirical, so Will could hear it with pleasure: “_Of all the horses in the merry greenwood_ _The bob-tailed mare bears the bells away._” “Always jolly, my little mavis,” said the patriarch, fumbling on, and, unable to resist the infection, his sepulchral bass voice took up the Carters’ Chorus: “_There is Hey, there is Ree,_ _There is Hoo, there is Gee——_” “Oi wouldn’t unlock the barn,” he broke off to explain as the door swung open, “ef Oi hadn’t such good company.” He stood peering suspiciously into the tall raftered and beamed glooms; redolent of old hay and punctuated with a few cobwebbed and rusty instruments amid the endless litter. Will’s eye was fascinated by an old wine-barrel flanked by a chaff-cutter and a turnip-cutter and covered with boards and weights. He divined it held corn and was thus closed against rats, and a whiff of aniseed came up in memory, and in a flash he saw the faces of Tony Flip and the Deacon—and himself flying after a carrier’s cart. “They’ve stole my flail,” cried the Gaffer. “Why, there it is, under that straw,” said Will. “Oh, ay. But there was more logs, Oi’ll goo bail. Drat ’em, can’t they chop for theirselves? It’ll be that Uncle Lilliwhyte.” “Oh, but he’s only too honest,” said Will incautiously. “There ain’t nobody honest,” barked the Gaffer. “But he sent me an adder——” he began. “Not he. ’Twas Jinny told him to send the adder. He’d ha’ kept your sixpence and let you whistle for your sarpint. But next time you want an adder, you come to me.” “Do you sell ’em too?” he murmured, surprised. “Oi _be_ an adder!” “What do you mean?” His spectacles glowed strangely. “Read your Bible, young man—Dan is an adder in the path, what biteth the horse’s heels, so that the rider should fall backwards—that’s the blessing of Jacob—and let no man try to ride roughshod over the likes o’ me.” Will shrank back before the passion of his words. Indeed in that gloomy old barn he began to feel a bit nervous. “I’ve brought a note for Jinny,” he said hastily. “Will you give it to her?” The old man took the cocked-hat. “Mr. Daniel Quarles!” he read slowly. “But it’s for _me_!” Will’s blush was now papaverous. “No—no!” he stammered. It was a conjuncture he had not foreseen.