Cai glanced at her.  “I thought—­I was afraid you were offended,” he said, his heart quickening its beat.

“Well, and so I was.  To begin brawling as you did in a lady’s presence—­and two such friends as I’d always supposed you to be!  It was shocking.  Now, wasn’t it?”

“It has made me miserable enough,” pleaded Cai.

“And so it ought. . . .  I don’t know that I should be forgiving you now,” added Mrs Bosenna demurely, “if it didn’t happen that I wanted advice.”

“My advice?” asked Cai incredulous.

“It’s a business matter.  Women, you know, are so helpless where business is concerned.” (Oh, Mrs Bosenna!)

“If I can be of any help—­” murmured Cai, somewhat astonished but prodigiously flattered.

“Hush!” she interrupted, lifting a quick eye towards the knap of the hill they had descended.  “Isn’t that Captain Hunken, up above? . . .  Yes, to be sure it is, and he’s turned to walk away just as I was going to call him!” She glanced at Cai, and there was mischief in the glance.  “I expect the ploughing has begun, and I won’t detain either of you. . . .  The business?  We won’t discuss it now.  I have to wait here for Dinah, who is coming for company as soon as she’s finished her housework. . . .  To-morrow, then, if you have nothing better to do.  Good-bye!”

He left her and climbed the hill again.  He seemed to tread on air; and no doubt, when he reached the plateau where the ploughmen were driving their teams to and fro before the judges, with corrugated brows, compressed lips, eyes anxiously bent on the imaginary line of the furrow to be drawn, this elation gave his bearing a confidence which to the malignant or uncharitable might have presented itself as bumptiousness.  He mingled with the small group of cognoscenti, listened to their criticisms, and by-and-by, cocking his head knowledgeably on one side, hazarded the remark that “the fellow coming on with the roan and grey seemed to be missing depth in his effort to keep straight.”

It was an innocent observation, uttered, may be, a thought too dogmatically, but truly with no deeper intent than to elicit fresh criticism from an expert who stood close beside his elbow.  But a voice behind him said, and carried its sneer—­

“Maybe he ain’t the only one hereabouts as misses depth.”

Cai, with a grey face, swung about.  He had recognised the voice.  Some demon in him prompted the retort—­

“Eh, ‘Bias?  Is that you?—­and still takin’ an interest in agriculture?”

The shaft went home.  ’Bias’s voice shook as he replied—­

“I mayn’t know much about education, at two minutes’ notice; and I mayn’t pretend to know much about ploughin’ and wear a button in my coat to excuse it.  But I reckon that for a pound a side I could plough you silly, Cai Hocken.”

It was uttered in full hearing of some ten or twelve spectators, mostly townsmen of Troy; and these, turning their heads, for a moment not believing their ears, stared speechlessly at the two men whose friendship had in six months passed into a local byword.  Cap’n Hocken and Gap’n Hunken—­what, quarrelling? No, no—­nonsense:  it must be their fun!