“She vilifies me,” said Mac-an-Ward, sotto voce.

“Then I am glad he has not sold me one of his own,” said Festus Clasby.  “I have a fancy for the lasting article.”

“You may be able to buy it yet,” said the woman.  “My brother is lying sick of the fever, and I have his right to sell the Cans with the Diamond Notch on the handles where they are riveted.”

“But I have bought it already.”

“This man,” said the damsel, in a tone which discounted the husband, “had no right to sell it.  If it is not his property, but the property of my brother, won’t you say that he nor no other man has a right to sell it?”

Festus Clasby felt puzzled.  He was unaccustomed to dealing with people who raised questions of title.  His black brows knit.

“How can a man who doesn’t own a thing sell a thing?” she persisted.  “Is it a habit of yours to sell that which you do not own?”

“It is not,” Festus Clasby said, feeling that an assault had been wantonly made on his integrity as a trader.  “No one could ever say that of me.  Honest value was ever my motto.”

“And the motto of my brother who is sick with the fever.  I will go to him and say, ’I met the most respectable-looking man in all Europe, who put a value on your can because of the diamond notch.’  I will pay into his hands the one-and-six which is its price.”

Festus Clasby had, when taken out of his own peculiar province, a heavy mind, and the type of mind that will range along side-issues and get lost in them if they are raised often enough and long enough.  The diamond notch on the handle, the brother who was sick of the fever, the alleged non-title of Mac-an-Ward, the interposition of the woman, the cans with the handles which fall out, and the cans with the handles which do not fall out, the equity of selling that which does not belong to you—­all these things chased each other across Festus Clasby’s mind.  The Son of the Bard stood silent by the cart, looking away down the road with a pensive look on his long, narrow face.

“Pay me the one-and-six to put into the hands of my brother,” the woman said.

Festus Clasby’s mind was brought back at once to his pocket.  “No,” he said, “but this man can give you my money to pay into the hand of your brother.”

“This man,” she said airily, “has no interest for me.  Whatever took place between the two of you in regard to my brother’s can I will have nothing to say to.”

“Then if you won’t,” said Festus Clasby, “I will have nothing to do with you.  If he had no right to the can you can put the police on to him; that’s what police are for.”

“And upon you,” the woman added.  “The police are also for that.”

“Upon me?” Festus Clasby exclaimed, his chest swelling.  “My name has never crossed the mind of a policeman, except, maybe, for what he might owe me at the end of the month for pigs’ heads.  I never stood in the shadow of the law.  And to this man standing by your side I have nothing to say.”