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"But you says yourself that yer can't always read them," said Journeyman; "an accident will send you off on the wrong tack, so it all comes to the same thing, omens or no omens." "A man will trip over a piece of wire laid across the street, but that don't prove he can't walk, do it, Walter?" Walter was unable to say that it did not, and so Ketley scored another point over his opponent.
Of course there was an inquest, and the coroner asked many questions regarding the habits of the deceased. Mrs. Ketley was one of the witnesses called, and she deposed that he had lost a great deal of money lately in betting, and that he went to the "King's Head" for the purpose of betting.
"I don't see meself what pocket-books, greasy or not greasy, has to do with it," said William. "Walter put a fair question to Herbert. The omen didn't come out right, and Walter wanted to know why it didn't come out right." "That was it," said Journeyman. All eyes were now fixed on Ketley. "You want to know why the omen wasn't right? I'll tell you because it was no omen at all, that's why.
Peter Ketley out to where the overturned windmill tower lay like a museum skeleton along its bed of weeds and asked him just what tools he'd need. It was a simple question, predicating a simple answer. Yet he didn't seem able to reply to it. He scratched his close-clipped pate and said he'd have to look things over and study it out.
On another occasion he had a hard run with Lord Thurlow during a visit paid by the latter to the Ketley Iron-Works. Lord Thurlow pulled up his horse first, and observed, laughing, "I think, Mr. Reynolds, this is probably the first time that ever a Lord Chancellor rode a race with a Quaker!" But a stranger rencontre was one which befel Mr. Reynolds on Blackheath.
He held a glass of whisky-and-water in a hairy hand, and bit at the corner of a brown moustache. He wore a threadbare black frock-coat, and carried a newspaper under his arm. Ketley and Journeyman held widely different views regarding the best means of backing horses.
Ketley was preoccupied with dreams and omens; Journeyman, a clerk in the parish registry office, studied public form; he was guided by it in all his speculations, and paid little heed to the various rumours always afloat regarding private trials.
"I don't think he's quite right in 'is 'ead; he's been losing a lot lately." One day Journeyman was surprised to see Ketley sitting quite composedly in the jug and bottle bar. "He got me at last; I had to go, the whispering got so loud in my head as I was a-coming down the street.
That rather blighted the flower of Bud's tender young romance, and to this day he effects a wide detour when he happens to meet me on the trail or in the byways of Buckhorn. But Peter Ketley is not of the Bud Dyruff type. He is more complex, and, accordingly, more disturbing. For I can see admiration in his eye, even though he no longer expresses it by word of mouth.
"One of them unfortunate accidents," repeated Journeyman, derisively; "what's accidents to do with them that 'as to do with the reading of omens? I thought they rose above such trifles as weights, distances, bad riding.... A stone or two should make no difference if the omen is right." Ketley was no way put out by the slight titter that Journeyman's retort had produced in the group about the bar.
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