‘Faith, it’s a good thing to be nursed by a woman when you’re sick!’ said Mulvaney.  ‘Dir’ cheap at the price av twenty broken heads.’

Ortheris turned to frown across the valley.  He had not been nursed by many women in his life.

‘An’ then Dr. Warbottom comes ridin’ up, an’ Jesse Roantree along with ‘im.  He was a high-larned doctor, but he talked wi’ poor folk same as theirsens.  “What’s ta big agaate on naa?” he sings out.  “Brekkin’ tha thick head?” An’ he felt me all ovver.  “That’s none broken.  Tha’ nobbut knocked a bit sillier than ordinary, an’ that’s daaft eneaf.”  An’ soa he went on, callin’ me all the names he could think on, but settin’ my arm, wi’ Jesse’s help, as careful as could be.  “Yo’ mun let the big oaf bide here a bit, Jesse,” he says, when he hed strapped me up an’ given me a dose o’ physic; “an’ you an’ Liza will tend him, though he’s scarcelins worth the trouble.  An’ tha’ll lose tha work,” sez he, “an’ tha’ll be upon th’ Sick Club for a couple o’ months an’ more.  Doesn’t tha think tha’s a fool?"’

’But whin was a young man, high or low, the other av a fool, I’d like to know?’ said Mulvaney.  ’Sure, folly’s the only safe way to wisdom, for I’ve thried it.’

‘Wisdom!’ grinned Ortheris, scanning his comrades with uplifted chin.  ‘You’re bloomin’ Solomons, you two, ain’t you?’

Learoyd went calmly on, with a steady eye like an ox chewing the cud.

’And that was how I come to know ’Liza Roantree.  There’s some tunes as she used to sing—­aw, she were always singin’—­that fetches Greenhow Hill before my eyes as fair as yon brow across there.  And she would learn me to sing bass, an’ I was to go to th’ chapel wi’ ’em where Jesse and she led the singin’, th’ old man playin’ the fiddle.  He was a strange chap, old Jesse, fair mad wi’ music, an’ he made me promise to learn the big fiddle when my arm was better.  It belonged to him, and it stood up in a big case alongside o’ th’ eight-day clock, but Willie Satterthwaite, as played it in the chapel, had getten deaf as a door-post, and it vexed Jesse, as he had to rap him ower his head wi’ th’ fiddle-stick to make him give ower sawin’ at th’ right time.

‘But there was a black drop in it all, an’ it was a man in a black coat that brought it.  When th’ Primitive Methodist preacher came to Greenhow, he would always stop wi’ Jesse Roantree, an’ he laid hold of me from th’ beginning.  It seemed I wor a soul to be saved, and he meaned to do it.  At th’ same time I jealoused ‘at he were keen o’ savin’ ’Liza Roantree’s soul as well, and I could ha’ killed him many a time.  An’ this went on till one day I broke out, an’ borrowed th’ brass for a drink from ’Liza.  After fower days I come back, wi’ my tail between my legs, just to see ‘Liza again.  But Jesse were at home an’ th’ preacher—­th’ Reverend Amos Barraclough.  ‘Liza said naught, but a bit o’ red come into her face as were white of a regular thing.  Says Jesse, tryin’ his best