"Iss; partly, that, an' to listen here to their voices soundin' so pretty across the wall. And partly, I reckon, 'tis on the chance to get speech with the Lord Proprietor and persuade 'em to let you bide on Saaron. But that you'll never do. Mind, I'm not sayin' a word against th' old curmudgeon. He's my employer, to start with, besides being what God made 'em. But, reason? You might as well try reason on the hind leg of a jackass. Go thy ways home, Tregarthen: go thy ways home an' teach yourself that all this world and the kingdoms thereof be but what the mind o' man makes 'em, and Saaron itself but a warren for rabbits." Tregarthen shook his head. "A barren rock.... Come now, bring your mind to it!" Abe suggested, coaxing. "'Tis no good, Abe." "A cottage in a vineyard--what says holy Isaiah? A lodge in a garden of cucumbers--a besieged city----" "Abe Jenkins!"--It was the Lord Proprietor's voice calling from the upper gate. "Y'r honour!" Abe snatched his hoe and wheeled about sharply as the great man came down the path with Mr. Pope at his heels. "How long have you been working here?" demanded Sir Caesar. "Perhaps I had better have said 'idling,'" he added, with a frown and a curt nod at Tregarthen in the gateway. Sir Caesar's gray eyebrows had a trick of bristling up, like a cat's, at the first hint of unpleasantness, even at sight of anyone who crossed his will; and they bristled now. "'Been workin' here the best part of the morning," answered Abe, with an old man's freedom of tone and a complacent look backward at the patch of turned soil. "And 'might have been workin' yet but the children singin' their hymn yonder"--with a jerk of his thumb towards the wall that hid the school building--"warned me 'twas time to knock off for dinner." Now, the Lord Proprietor had meant his question for preface to another. "Had Abe, while at work, caught sight of a strange lady anywhere in the garden?" The question, if put just then, and in Tregarthen's hearing, might have changed the whole current of this small history; for Tregarthen was a poor hand at dissimulation--or, rather, was incapable of it. But the sight of his back, as he turned away, caused Sir Caesar's eyebrows to bristle up yet more pugnaciously. "Hi, sir?" Tregarthen turned slowly. "You are waiting here to fetch your children from school, I suppose?" "Yes," said Tregarthen. "And isn't that an instance, man, of what I tried to make you understand two days ago? Cannot you see what time and trouble you'll be saving yourself--let alone the children--when you're comfortably settled on Brefar and within half-a-mile of a handy school?" "Yes," said Tregarthen again. His eyes met the Lord Proprietor's without servility as without disrespect, but with a kind of patient wonder. "Well, then"--Sir Caesar turned to Mr. Pope for confirmation--"here is a man who--to give him his due, eh?--works as hard as any on the Islands; harder, I daresay, than his own hired labourer----"