"Then they'm small-minded," said Beer firmly; "for, looked at all round, human nature be a very hopeful thing." Mordecai Cockey sighed. "You may be in the right. Perhaps building of clothes do narrow the heart, for we grow apt to think 'tis our feathers make the birds. For that matter the world counts us but light. We'm slighted tradesmen, we tailors. They say it takes nine of us to make a man; though it only takes one to get a long family, as I know to my cost. Thirteen children have I, an' all with the tailoring spirit in 'em except my eldest son." "An' what might he be doing?" asked Putt. "Well, he's a baker." "A very honest trade." "That's just what it ban't," declared Mr. Cockey. "They'm sly as lawyers; an' there's a damned sight more in bread than corn nowadays. A man may be eating his own great gran'faither; as I've said openly down to Totnes, an' nobody contradicted me. "God's word! They don't rob churchyards for their bones, do they?" asked Woodman. "If I thought that, I'd never take bit nor sup to Totnes no more." "There's ways an' ways," explained the tailor. "Bone goes in; as thus. Man is earth, an' earth is bread; an' when they take the top spit off what was thought to be an old burial place of the ancients an' turn it over an' make a wheat field--what then?" "'Tis just short of a cannibal act!" declared Woodman; for they never buried deep in them days." "Rubbish, Harvey!" answered Beer. "We ourselves be only the fatness of the earth when all's said. 'Tis nature's plan; an' I see no harm in it at all." "More don't I for that matter," declared Cockey. "With my well-knowed feelings about human nature, you won't be surprised if I say that many a man's better as corn or cabbage than ever he was on two legs." "Then you don't believe in God, same as me," said Kekewich grimly. "Not at all, not at all," answered the other. "I'm only saying a man's body is mud, an' his clothes is mud in shape of wool or flax; an' he's all mud to the eye; but as to his soaring spirit I won't hazard a word. A tailor must believe in God. 'Twas Him as gave the word for clothes an' put Adam an' his lady into their first shifts of His own Almighty making." "You meet men whose spirits be the muddiest part about 'em, all the same," declared Kekewich. "So you will; but every thinking creature turned of fifty must have come across folks with souls looking out of their eyes. Why, I've seed pictures in big houses where the paint had a soul! Ess fay--beautiful dead an' gone women have pretty nigh spoke to me where I sat an' worked below their gold frames." "I'll never believe in souls," said the older man. "We'm a vile race, an' no God of Heaven would ever make such a poor bargain as to overbuy such trash as us at the price of His only Son. Why for should He? If He'd but lifted His finger, He might have had us for nought." "The devil must be itching for you, Kek," said Harvey Woodman.