"The fault was mine, and I'll take the blame," answered Richard Beer. "You men bide quiet an' let his anger fall upon me." Grace and Norcot, not desiring to see the labourers' discomfiture, rode away, and a moment later Maurice Malherb arrived upon the scene. His strong face, scarred with passion uncontrolled, grew dark again now, and the kindly look vanished from his eyes as the customary storm-cloud of black eyebrow settled upon them. "What are you doing? What means this digging?" he asked. "'Tis me as done it, your honour," answered Beer. "I thought as a ford----" "A ford! What business have you to dare to think? I said a bridge." "The stone----" "Look round you, you lazy rascal! Stone--stone--curse the stone! Scratch the ground anywhere, and it grins at you with its granite teeth! Let that bridge be finished by sundown or clear out, the whole pack of ye! A ford! And had I said 'ford' you would have built a bridge!" Mr. Beer grew pale behind his beard, but did not reply, and Mr. Woodman also kept his temper and addressed his son. "Go an' harness two bullocks to a truckamuck,"[*] he said, "an' you, Putt, slip up to the shed an' get some irons as you'll find there." [*] _Truckamuck_: A sort of sledge. Then he turned to his master and spoke again-- "Us'll set to work this instant moment, your honour." "That's well--by sundown, mind." Malherb was riding off when old Smallridge addressed him, and the ancient man precipitated the very accident he feared. "An' if it please you, your honour's goodness, I do pray as you won't let no hand touch this here holy tomb. Kekewich, as be grey enough to know better, have said that the stepstones would make a very tidy bridge an' save labour; but t'others tell me you never pay no heed to him, an' I hope your honour won't now." The two old men glared at each other, and Malherb answered. What he heard was nearly true, but that he heard it from Uncle Smallridge instantly angered him. That the labourers should have perceived how Kekewich was ignored--that these hirelings should note their master's indifference to the wisdom of his servitor--again awoke Malherb's temper. "They say I don't heed Kekewich? Then they lie. Kek's little finger holds more sense than all their stupid heads together." Whereon Mr. Kekewich shone around him as the sun emerging from a cloud. "That cross there--good wrought stone wasted," he explained. "They steps might have been made for the bridge we want. So I told 'em; an' all they did was to show the whites of their silly eyes." The master reflected but a moment; then he issued a command. He spoke in the name of reason--a favourite expedient with the unreasonable. "Good practical sense. Now we'll see if I run counter to Kekewich. He's right and you're wrong. Here are stones lying useless on my land, and I want even such for a purpose. Reason points to them, and I will use them. Pull down that cross and build my bridge."