‘No, no,’ assented Ichabod. ‘But it’s i’ this way. It’s i’ the blood. What’s bred i’ the bone will come out i’ the flesh. Afore thee makest friends with young Joe Mountain, Master Richard, thee ax thy feyther.’ Master Richard, lapsing into silence, thought things over. ‘Ichabod,’ he said at last, ‘is a boy _bound_ to be bad if he has a bad grandfather?’ ‘Sure!’ said Ichabod, who was not going to be worsted in argument for want of corroborative fact if he could help it. Master Richard thought things over a little while longer, and returned to the charge. ‘Suppose the boy with the bad grandfather had a good grandmother, Ichabod?’ ‘None of the Mountain lot ever had,’ Ichabod replied. There was no item in Ichabod’s creed more fixed than this--the Mountains of Mountain Farm were hateful and contemptible. He had imbibed the belief with his mother’s milk and his father’s counsel. His grandfather had known it for the one cardinal certainty of nature. Just as the serving-men of Capulet hated the serving-men of Montague, so the oldest servants of the Mountains hated the older servants of the Reddys. The men made the masters’ quarrel their own. There was a feudal spirit in the matter, and half the fights of this outlying district of the parish were provoked by that ancient history of the brook. At this time of day it mattered very little indeed if the history was true or false, for neither proof nor disproof was possible, and the real mischief was done past remedy in any case. ‘Are you sure our side fought for Cromwell, Ichabod?’ Master Richard. asked, after another long and thoughtful silence. ‘To be sure,’ said Ichabod. ‘I don’t think it can be true, then, about the brook,’ said the boy, ‘because Cromwell won, and everybody who was on his side had their own way. Mr. Greenfell teaches history at school, and he says so.’ This was nothing to Ichabod, whose intellect was not constructed for the reception of historical evidences. ‘Then ax thy feyther, Master Richard,’ he answered; ‘he’ll tell thee the rights on it.’