The labourer’s voice only reached the listener in the meadow. He spoke with the Barfield drawl, and his features, which were stiffened by the frozen wind, were twisted into a look of habitual waggery. ‘Well,’ said he, in answer to his young companion, ‘maybe, Master Richard, it might be wicked, but it’s main like natur.’ ‘I shan’t hate Joe Mountain when I’m a man,’ said the boy. The surly man in the field, hearing these words, looked on a sudden surlier still, and throwing up his head with a listening air, and holding his ankle with both hands, crouched and craned his neck to listen. ‘May’st have to change thy mind, Master Richard,’ said the labourer. ‘Why should I change my mind, Ichabod?’ asked the boy, looking up at him. ‘Why?’ answered Ichabod, ‘thee’lt niver have it said as thee wast afraid of any o’ the Mountain lot.’ ‘I’m not afraid of him,’ piped the engaging young cockerel ‘We had a fight in the coppice last holidays, and I beat him. The squire caught us, and we were going to stop, but he made us go on, and he saw fair. Then he made us shake hands after. Joe Mountain wouldn’t say he’d had enough, but the squire threw up the sponge for him. And he gave us two half-crowns apiece, and said we were both good plucked uns.’ ‘Ah! ‘said Ichabod, with warmth, ‘he’s the right sort is the squire. And there’s no sort or kind o’ sport as comes amiss to him. A gentleman after my own heart.’ ‘He made us shake hands and promise we’d be friends,’ said Master Richard, ‘and we’re going to be.’ ‘Make him turn the brook back first, Master Richard,’ said Ichabod. The two were almost at the bridge by this time, and the listener could hear distinctly. ‘Turn the brook back?’ the boy asked. ‘What do you mean, Ichabod?’ ‘Ax thy feyther, when thee gettest home,’ answered Ichabod. ‘He’ll tell thee all the rights on it. So fur as I can make out--and it was the talk o’ the country i’ my grandfeyther’s daysen--it amounts to this. Look here! ‘He and the boy arrested their steps on the bridge, and Ichabod pointed along the frozen track of the brook. ‘Seest that hollow ten rods off? It was in the time o’ Cromwell Hast heard tell o’ Cromwell, I mek no doubt?’ ‘Oliver Cromwell,’ said Master Richard. ‘He was Lord Protector of England. He fought King Charles.’ ‘Like enough,’ said Ichabod. ‘In his daysen, many ‘ears ago, there was the Reddys here and the Mountains there’--indicating either house in turn by pointing with his thumb--‘just as they be now. The Reddy o’ that day--he was thy grandfeyther’s grand-feyther as like as not--maybe he was _his_ grandfeyther for aught as I can tell, for it’s a deadly-dreadful heap o’ time long past--the Reddy o’ that day went to the wars, and fowt for Cromwell. The Mountain o’ that time stopped at hum. Up to then they’d niver been misfriended as fur as I know. That’s how it’s put about, anyway. But whilst the Reddy was away what’s the Mountain do?’