"We shall have plenty of time," said Mary, as they reached the farther edge of the hazel clump, "and we may as well sit down on the rocks and read." "No, not now," said Claude hastily. Then in an agitated whisper, as a peculiar whizzing noise was heard: "Oh, Mary, this is too cruel. Why have you brought me here?" "Because it was not considered good for Adam to live alone in Paradise. There's poor Adam alone and disconsolate, fishing to pass time away. Paradise in the glen is very pretty, but dull. Enter Eve. Now, Claude, dear, show yourself worthy of the name of woman. Go on!" Volume One, Chapter II. THINGS GO CROOKED. Norman Gartram returned to his seat, looking rigid and scowling as he gazed fiercely at the workman. "Well?" he said sharply. "Don't believe she can be his bairn," said the workman to himself, as he returned his employers angry stare. "I said _Well_!" "I heard you, master. Needn't shout." "What do you want?" "Come about the big block at the corner. Time it was blasted down." "Then blast it down; and how many more times am I to tell you to say _sir_ to me?" "You're my master, and pay me my wage, and I earn it honest. That's all there is between us, for the Lord made all men equal, and--" "Look here, Isaac Woodham, once for all I will not have any of your Little Bethel cant in my presence. Now about this block; let it be deeply tamped, and the powder put well home." "I'm going to blast it down with dinnymite." The elder man flushed up scarlet, and the veins in his forehead swelled up into knotted network. "Once for all--" he thundered. "There, don't get in a way, master," said the man coolly. "If you go on like that you'll be having another fit, and I'm sure you oughtn't to cut short such a life as yours." "Isaac Woodham, one of these days you'll tempt me to knock you down. Insolent brute! And now, look here; I've told you before that I would not have dynamite used in my quarry. I'll have my work done as it always has been done--with powder. The first man who uses a charge of that cursed stuff I'll discharge." "It's better, and does its work cleaner," grumbled the man sullenly; and he gave his superior a morose look from under his shaggy brows. "I don't care if it's a hundred times better. Go and blast the block down with powder, as it always has been done, I tell you again. I want my men; and there's no trusting that other stuff, or they're not fit to be trusted with it. Now go, and don't come here again without being summoned." "Too grand for the likes o' me, eh, Master Gartram?" "Will you have the goodness to recollect that you are speaking to a gentleman, sir?" "I'm speaking to another man, I being a man," said Woodham sturdily. "I don't know nothing about no gentlemen. I'm speaking to Norman Gartram, quarry-owner, who lives here in riches and idleness upon what we poor slaves have made for him by the sweat of our brows."