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"Unless," he added, as if suddenly inspired, "unless it was that man Raffles." "It couldn't 've bin," jerked the clerk from his conning-tower of a collar. "He'd gone to Davy Jones long before." "Are you sure?" asked Raffles. "Was his body ever found?" "Found and buried," replied our imaginative friend. "Malter, I think it was; or it may have been Giberaltar. I forget which."
It was the unvarying custom in Weatherbury to sink minor differences when the maltster had to be pacified. "Weak as water! yes," said Jan Coggan. "Malter, we feel ye to be a wonderful veteran man, and nobody can gainsay it." "Nobody," said Joseph Poorgrass. "Ye be a very rare old spectacle, malter, and we all admire ye for that gift."
At present the two stories were occupied; the second by a malter and his brood of children, the third by a woman who was partially bedridden. The lower or ground floor of four rooms she reserved for herself. As a matter of fact the forward room, with its huge middle-age fireplace and the great square of beamed and plastered walls and stone flooring, was sizable for all domestic purposes.
"We all know that, and ye must have a wonderful talented constitution to be able to live so long, mustn't he, neighbours?" "True, true; ye must, malter, wonderful," said the meeting unanimously.
"You must be a very aged man, malter, to have sons growed mild and ancient," he remarked. "Father's so old that 'a can't mind his age, can ye, father?" interposed Jacob. "And he's growed terrible crooked too, lately," Jacob continued, surveying his father's figure, which was rather more bowed than his own. "Really one may say that father there is three-double."
Oak lowered the lambs from their unnatural elevation, wrapped them in hay, and placed them round the fire. "We've no lambing-hut here, as I used to have at Norcombe." said Gabriel, " and 'tis such a plague to bring the weakly ones to a house. If 'twasn't for your place here, malter, I don't know what I should do! this keen weather. And how is it with you to-day, malter?"
"Nobody." said Joseph Poorgrass. "Ye be a very rare old spectacle, malter, and we all admire ye for that gift. " "Ay, and as a young man, when my senses were in prosperity, I was likewise liked by a good-few who knowed me." said the maltster. "'Ithout doubt you was 'ithout doubt." The bent and hoary 'man was satisfied, and so apparently was Henery Frag.
"Your turnip-hoeing were in the summer and your malting in the winter of the same years, and ye don't ought to count-both halves, father." "Chok' it all! I lived through the summers, didn't I? That's my question. I suppose ye'll say next I be no age at all to speak of?" "Sure we shan't," said Gabriel, soothingly. "Ye be a very old aged person, malter," attested Jan Coggan, also soothingly.
"You must be a very aged man, malter, to have sons growed mild and ancient" he remarked. "Father's so old that 'a can't mind his age, can ye, father?" interposed Jacob. "And he growled terrible crooked too, lately" Jacob continued, surveying his father's figure, which was rather more bowed than his own. "Really one may say that father there is three-double."
"Ah, when I and my wife were married at Norcombe Church." said the old maltster, not pleased at finding himself left out of the subject "we were called the handsomest couple in the neighbourhood everybody said so." "Danged if ye bain't altered now, malter." said a voice with the vigour natural to the enunciation of a remark- ably evident truism.
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