"Best way is to tell him clear at the beginning of a week that you want next Saturday afternoon off--then he knows and it goes through all right." "You might think it was the best way," answered Palk; "but it ain't, because I've tried it. If you do that, he'll run you off your legs all the week, and hit upon a thousand jobs, and always remind you about Saturday, and say he knows as you'll be wanting to put in a bit extra, owing to the holiday coming. Then he'll offer to do your work o' Saturday afternoon, though of course there ain't none, and make a great upstore about putting off a bit of pleasuring he'd planned for himself." Maynard laughed and stood up for a moment to rest the muscles of his back. "It'll take cleverer chaps than us to be even with him." "A cruel, vexatious man, and knows how to balance the good against the bad so clever that nobody in his senses would leave him," grumbled the elder. They continued to pull the great golden roots from the earth, and for a long time neither spoke. Then Palk, whose mind still ran on his Saturday afternoon, explained that he had intended to meet a man at Ashburton and would now be unable to do so. "If that's it, don't bother. I'm free and I can do all he wanted," said Lawrence. "If you can, then I'm obliged," answered the horseman. "It's somebody I'm very wishful to see, because he married my sister. She's dead, but she had a son, and I like to know, for his mother's sake, how he's going on." Maynard was not interested and they spoke no more. At the side of the field they were building up the roots into a "cave"--packing them together and then heaping earth upon them. The hour was early noon, and at the end of the row they desisted, emptied the full cart at the hedge-side and presently went in to dinner. "I'm going to see that old hunter, Enoch Withycombe, again to-morrow," declared the younger. "He's a queer man to meet. Wonderful the learning he's gotten, along of being crippled and nought much to do but read and think." "Miss Susan says he's not a very good companion for you young men, however." "Why, Tom?" "Along of his opinions." "He's taught me a lot." "That you may have to unlearn. They clever men are dangerous. I don't like clever men. You never know where you are with 'em." Mr. Stockman did not return for dinner and they ate it with Susan. She was perturbed at the necessity of going to Ashburton for her father. "He wants half a dozen things, and I'm so properly busy here this week-end that I don't know how I'll do it," she declared, unaware that Thomas was going down. Slowly it dawned over his mind that he might serve her. He hesitated, for he dreaded making any original proposition. He felt ready and even desirous to offer his services, but spoke not from native caution. Maynard, however, helped him. "Tom's going in," he said. "Can't he do it?" "I've no right to trouble him," answered Soosie-Toosie.