“Liza,” he said, “I’m going to bring that Robbie down a peg or two.  He’s been a perching himself up alongside of Ralph Ray this last back end, but I’m going to feckle him this turn.”

“No, Joseph; are you going to do that, though?” said Liza, with a brightening face that seemed to Mr. Garth to say, “Do it by all means.”

“Mayhap I am,” said the blacksmith, significantly shaking his head.  He was snared as neatly by this simple face as ever was a swallow by a linnet hidden in a cage among the grass.

“And that Ralph, too, the great lounderan fellow, he treats me like dirt, that he does.”

“But you’ll pay him out now, won’t you, Joseph?” said Liza, as though glorying in the blacksmith’s forthcoming glory.

“Liza, my lass, shall I tell you something?” Under the fire of a pair of coquettish little eyes, his head as well as his heart seemed to melt, and he became eagerly communicative.  Dropping his voice, he said,—­

“That Ralph’s not gone away at all.  He’ll be at his father’s berrying, that he will.”

“Nay!” cried Liza, without a prolonged accent of surprise; and, indeed, this fact had come upon her with so much unexpectedness that her curiosity was now actually as well as ostensibly aroused.

“Yes,” said Mr. Garth; “and there’s those as knows where to lay hands on him this very day—­that there is.”

“I shouldn’t be surprised, now, if yon Robbie Anderson has been up to something with him,” said Liza, with a curl of the lip intended to convey an idea of overpowering disgust at the conduct of the absent Robbie.

“And maybe he has,” said Mr. Garth, with a ponderous shake of the head, denoting the extent of his reverse.  Evidently “he could an’ he would.”

“But you’ll go to them, won’t you, Joseph?  That is them as wants them—­leastways one of them—­them as wants him will go and take him, won’t they?”

“That they will,” said Joseph emphatically.  “But I must be off, lass; for I’ve the horses to get ready, forby the shortness of the time.”

“So you’re going on horseback, eh, Joey?  Will it take you long?”

“A matter of two hours, for we must go by the Black Sail and come back to Wastdale Head, and that’s round-about, thou knows.”  “So you’ll take them on Wastdale Head, then, eh?” said Liza, turning her head aside as though in the abundance of her maidenly modesty, but really glancing slyly under the corner of her bonnet in the direction taken by the mourners, and wondering if they could be overtaken.

Joseph was a little disturbed to find that he had unintentionally disclosed so much of the design.  The potency of the bright blue eyes that looked up so admiringly into his face at the revelation of the subtlety with which he had seen through a mystery impenetrable to less powerful vision, had betrayed him into unexpected depths of confidence.