Julius laughed scornfully, but the squire took him up very short. "You need not laugh, nephew. It is as I say. The Bulteels are as good stock as the Sandals; a fine old family, and, like the Sandals, at home here when the Conqueror came. Joe would do the right thing I'll be bound. Let us hear if he didn't, Sophia." After a while Joe stopped, for he had run himself very near short of wind; and he began rather to think shame of shouting and bellering so at an old man, and him as whisht as a trout through it all. And when Joe pulled in, he only said, as quietly as ever was, that Joe was a "natural curiosity." Joe didn't know very well what this meant; but he thought it was sauce, and it had like to have set him off again; but he beat himself down as well as he could, and he said, "Have you any thing against me? If you have, speak it out like a man; and don't sit there twiddling your thumbs, and calling folks out of their names in this road." Then it came out plain enough. All this ill-nature, Miss Sandal, was just because poor Joe hadn't brought him the same stones as he had gathered on the fells; and he said that changing them was either a very dirty trick, or a very clumsy joke. "Trick," said Joe. "_Joke_, did you say? It was ratherly past a joke to expect me to carry a load of broken stones all the way here, when there was plenty on the spot. I'm not such a fool as you've taken me for," said Joe. The jolly-jist took off his spectacles, and glowered at Joe without them. Then he put them on again, and glowered at Joe with them; and then he laughed, and asked Joe, if he thought there could be no difference in stones. "Why!" answered Joe, "you hardly have the face to tell me that one bag of stones isn't as good as another bag of stones; and surely to man you'll never be so conceited as to say that you can break stones better than old Abraham Atchisson, who breaks them for his bread, and breaks them all day long and every day."