The two farm-men turned with their bill-hooks in their hands. They nodded at David and grinned at his simple pleasantry. Lithe, clean-built fellows they were, both of them, such as they breed within the boundaries of Strathgarth, and they were friends and, save in the matter of wage-earning, they were roughly the equals of their master. “Come ye, then,” chuckled the farmer. “See what we’ve done a’ready, David! See how trim and snug the whole line lies of it! Nay, not that way, lad!” he broke off, as one of the hands began to lay a stout hawthorn stem, sawn half-way through, all out of line with its fellow on the left. He bent the branch as he would have it lie, then stepped aside--for a heavy man, Hirst was oddly active in his movements--and set to work to pluck a root of dog-briar from its deep bed. Twist and turn the root in his hands as he might, it would not budge. “’Tis all these durned leather gloves,” he said, throwing his gauntlets off. “They keep the prickles out, David--or reckon to--but when a body wants his naked hands--well, let him wear them naked.” Again he tugged, but the old root would not give; so David grasped Priscilla’s father by the middle, and “_Yoick!_” he cried, and they pulled together. The root left its hold, more suddenly than they had counted on, and David, being the hinder of the two, bore the full brunt of the farmer’s fall. David got to his feet by and by, and coaxed the wind back into his lungs. Farmer Hirst was laughing till the tears ran down his ruddy face; the men were laughing, too; so David, soon as he found breath, fetched out that slow, deep body-merriment of his. “We got him out o’ground! Oh, ay, we daunted yond old briar-root!” said he. Whereat the four laughed so heartily that a pair of curlews--just returned, like Reuben Gaunt, from sojourning God knew where--got up from the further side of the fence, and went crying toward the moor. “Briar-roots are the devil and all,” said Hirst, “when ye come to clean a hedge-bottom.” “Bear bonnie roses all the same, when June comes in,” ventured the blacksmith, not telling Hirst that wild roses reminded him, too often for his peace of mind, of Priscilla. “Pity to stump ’em up, say I, and pity came of my lending my hand to the job just now.” He made pretence to rub himself, as if the farmer’s bulk had raised painful sores on him. It is easy to laugh when the spring’s a-coming in, and the four workers startled a black-faced ewe that was near to her first lambing season. “Get away wi’ your jests, David,” answered Farmer Hirst. “D’ye think I want to have my lambs dropped hasty-like in the ditch down yonder?”