"I learned to lift, lad, when I war a young un; an’ ye doan’t loss that sort o’ trick so easy. ’Tis weel enough for these lads to be all for fighting wi’ their fists—but let me get to grips wi’ a man when he means mischief, say I, an’ he’ll noan do me mich harm.—Now, Jose, art bahn to get another mug-full? I’m fain o’ laziness to-neet, an’ I could weel sup another quart, though I’m nowt mich at drinking myseln." Janet, meanwhile, had ridden straight home to Wildwater after passing the window of the Friendly Inn, and had encountered Red Ratcliffe as she led her horse round to stable. "Dost ride from Marsh?" he sneered, blocking the stable-door. "From seeing a better man than thou? Nay. I have no dealings with Wayne of Marsh." "Thou’lt have no chance of such dealings by and by." "Indeed?" Lifting her brows a little, but disdaining to ask his leave to pass the door. "Indeed, Ratcliffe the Red? I thought—it might have been but fancy—that somehow thou didst shirk talk with Wayne of Marsh?" "The Lean Man does—but there’s younger blood than his to carry on the feud. We’re sick of waiting for the call that never comes, and soon we mean to show Nicholas that what he has not wit to compass, we can." "So eager to clinch the bargain?" she mocked. "Should I make thee a good wife, think’st thou?—There, take him to stall thyself," she added, putting the bridle into his hand. "I _know_ thou canst stable a horse, if thou hast scant knowledge of how to woo a maid." "’Tis a knowledge I may gather by and by—and thou shall teach me," he answered, meeting her eye with more than his accustomed boldness. *CHAPTER XIX* *HOW WAYNE KEPT THE PINFOLD* The marshland beyond Robin Hood’s Well was noisy this morning with the shouts of men, the sharp, impatient bark of dogs, the shrill bleating of sheep. A warm, lush-hearted day of June it was, with a yellow sun rising clear of the flaked strips of cloud that hung about the middle blue of heaven, and a low wind shaking the budding heather-tips and wrinkling the surface of standing pools; just such a day as fitted a sheep-washing, for wind and sun together would be quick to dry the fleeces. The washing-pools stood a few yards away from the stream that ran through Goblin Ghyll, and were no more than deepish holes dug out of the peat, bottomed and walled with sandstone blocks and rendered water-tight in a measure by lumps of marl worked in between the fissures of the stones. A narrow channel, fitted with a sluice-gate at the upper end, connected the streamway with the pools. On the right hand of each pool was a walled enclosure, into which the flocks were driven from the moor; on the left, a similar pinfold received the sheep as they were washed, and kept them penned there until each batch was ready to be driven off by its own shepherd.