"There's no shepherd for sheep like the owner of them," said Malherb. "A good wether was slaughtered not long since. I'd pay handsomely to know whose belly bettered by him. There's a man called Jack Ketch for that work, Lovey Lee." "You be fond of promising me a halter. See your own cursed temper don't thrust your head into one afore long. You be all alike--your brother, an' him as be dead, an' my old skinflint master--robber that he was. But 'tis idle to cuss the dust." "You've no call to curse Malherbs--you with twenty thousand pounds of my money stolen." "You still think as I've got you're beggaring old pot?" "I'll swear you had it; and I'd stake half its value that you have it yet." "An' if I had? What better way of filling your eyes with twenty thousand pound all to once?" "But not your own." "Bah! If I had it, 'twould be my own, as much as my body an' bones be my own--mine to make or mar--to cherish or put under my feet." "I'll swear your hag's eyes have mirrored it this night!" cried Malherb. "I see you licking your lips as though you had just come from a feast." "If 'twas so, 'tis a feast as I won't ax you to share." "Nevertheless, I shall share it some day unasked." "You'm welcome; but the day you see the Malherb amphora again will be the last day you see anything." "You've got it then?" "Why, as to that--since there be no witness here but your horse--I can speak. Ess, I've got it safe enough. 'Tis my family to me, my fire, my food, my heaven. I catch heat from it in the cold; it feeds me when I be hungry; it fires my blood same as liquor would. I hug it like a lover an' it makes me young again. But you--you that have lifted walls between my cattle an' their best grazing ground--you that have cursed me and promised to hang me--you that be what is worst in every generation of your race rolled into one--you may ax an' pray to all the devils of hell for your amphora; an' they'll sooner give it back to you than ever I shall!" Malherb preserved a very remarkable restraint under these insults. "As usual, my judgment is confirmed," he said. "You hold my treasure and deny me possession. So be it. But you must die some day, Lovey Lee. Now let us discuss the future."