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"No, no, no," Zeb flung out his hands. "It's too late, I tell 'ee. No man's words will I hear but the words of Lamech 'I ha' slain a man to my wounding, an' a young man to my hurt. Let me go 'tis too late. Let me go, I say " As the hollibubber still clung to his arm, he gave a push and broke loose. The old man tumbled beside the path with his head against the potato fence.
Zeb with a curse took to his heels and ran; nor for a hundred yards did he glance behind. When at last he flung a look over his shoulder, the hollibubber had picked himself up and was kneeling in the pathway. His hands were clasped and lifted. "Too late!" shouted Zeb again, and dashed on without a second look.
Between the path at this point and the cliff's edge lay a small patch cleared for potatoes, and here an oldish man was leaning on his shovel and looking up at Zeb. "Good-mornin', my son!" "Mornin', hollibubber!" The old man had once worked inland at St. Teath slate-quarries, and made his living as a "hollibubber," or one who carts away the refuse slates.
This feast of purification fell always on the 12th of July; and in the heyday of its celebration there lived in this cottage a widow-woman and her only son, a demented man about forty years old. There was no harm in the poor creature, who worked at the Lanihorne slate-quarries, six miles off, as a "hollibubber" that is to say, in carting away the refuse slate.
He passed Bradden Point and Widdy Cove at the rate of five miles an hour, or thereabouts, then he turned aside over a stile and crossed a couple of meadows; and after these he was on the high-road, on the very top of the hill overlooking Troy Harbour. He gazed down. The frigate was there, as the hollibubber had guessed, anchored at the harbour's mouth.
Back by the cliff's edge the hollibubber had finished his day's work and was shouldering his shovel to start for home, when he spied a dark figure coming eastwards along the track; and, putting up a hand to ward off the level rays of the sun, saw that it was the young man who had passed him at noonday. So he set down the shovel again, and waited. Young Zeb came along with his head down.
He was desperately shy, as he had confessed: but compassion overcame his shyness. "Surely," said he, "all we be children o' one Father: an' surely we may know each other's burdens; else, not knowin', how shall we bear 'em?" "You'm too late, hollibubber." Zeb stood still, looking out over the purple sea. The old man touched his arm gently. "How so?" "I've a-sold my soul to hell." "I don't care.
When he noticed the hollibubber standing in the path he started like a man caught in a theft. "My son, ye 've come to lift a weight off my heart. God forgi'e me that, i' my shyness, I let 'ee go by wi'out a word for your trouble." "All the country seems to know my affairs," Zeb answered with a scowl. The hollibubber's grey eyes rested on him tenderly.
Young Zeb gazed over the old man's head at the horizon line, and answered, as if reading the sentence there, "I might fare worse, hollibubber." The hollibubber seemed, for a second, about to speak; for, of course, he knew Zeb's trouble. But after a while he took his shovel out of the ground slowly. "Ay, ye might," he said; "pray the Lord ye don't." Zeb went on, faster than ever.
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