Festus Clasby turned the can over in his hands, a little bewildered.  “It looks an ordinary can enough,” he said.

“It is the Can with the Diamond Notch,” declared Mac-an-Ward.

“Would it be worth a shilling now?”

“He puts a price upon it!  It is blasphemy.  The man has no religion; he will lose his soul.  The devils will have him by the heels.  They will tear his red soul through the roof.  Give me the can; don’t hold it in those hands any longer.  They are coarse; the hair is standing about the purple knuckles like stubbles in an ill-cut meadow.  That can was made for the hands of a delicate woman or for the angels that carry water to the Court of Heaven.  I saw it in a vision the night before I made it; it was on the head of a maiden with golden hair.  Her feet were bare and like shells.  She walked across a field where daisies rose out of young grass; she had the can resting on her head like one coming from the milking.  So I rose up then and said, ’Now, I will make a can fit for this maiden’s head.’  And I made it out of the rising sun and the falling dew.  And now you ask me if it is worth a shilling.”

“For all your talk, it is only made of tin, and not such good tin.”

“Not good tin!  I held it in my hand in the piece before ever the clippers was laid upon it.  I bent it and it curved, supple as a young snake.  I shook it, and the ripples ran down the length of it like silver waves in a little lake.  The strength of the ages was in its voice.  It has gathered its power in the womb of the earth.  It was smelted from the precious metal taken from the mines of the Peninsula of Malacca, and it will have its gleam when the sparkle of the diamond is spent.”

“I’ll give you a shilling for it, and hold your tongue.”

“No!  I will not have it on my conscience.  God is my judge, I will break it up first.  I will cut it into pieces.  From one of them will yet be made a breastplate, and in time to come it will be nailed to your own coffin, with your name and your age and the date of your death painted upon it.  And when the paint is faded upon it it will shine over the dust of the bone of your breast.  It will be dug up and preserved when all graveyards are abolished.  They will say, ’We will keep this breastplate, for who knows but that it bore the name of the man who refused to buy the Can with the Diamond Notch.’”

“How much will you take for it?”

“Now you are respectful.  Let me put a price upon it, for it was I who fashioned it into this shape.  It will hold three gallons and a half from now until the time that swallows wear shoes.  But for all that I will part with it, because I am poor and hungry and have a delicate wife.  It breaks my heart to say it, but pay into my hands two shillings and it is yours.  Pay quickly or I may repent.  It galls me to part with it; in your charity pay quickly and begone.”

“I will not.  I will give you one-and-six.”