Caeltia did that, and at the end of a quarter of an hour Patsy had three rabbits stretched under his hand.
“That’s good enough,” he called; “we’ll go on now after the people.”
They stowed the rabbits under their coats and took the road.
They soon caught on their companions. The cart was drawn to the side of the road, at a little distance the ass was browsing, and Mary had a fire going in the brazier and the potatoes ready for the pot.
Patsy tossed the rabbits to her.
“There you are, my girl,” said he, and, with Caeltia, he sank down on the grassy margin of the road and drew out his pipe.
The strange man was sitting beside Art, to whom he was explaining the mechanism of a concertina.
“While we are waiting,” said Patsy to him, “you can tell us all the news; tell us what happened to the land and what you’re doing on the road; and there is a bit of twist to put in your pipe so that you’ll talk well.”
Mary broke in:
“Wait a minute now, for I want to hear that story; let yourself help me over with the brazier and we can all sit together.”
There was a handle to the bucket and through this they put a long stick and lifted all bodily to the butt of the hedge.
“Now we can sit together,” said Mary, “and I can be cooking the food and listening to the story at the same time.”
“I’d sooner give you a tune on the concertina,” said Billy the Music.
“You can do that afterwards,” replied Patsy.
XXI
“I’ll tell you the story,” said Billy the Music, “and here it is:
“A year ago I had a farm in the valley. The sun shone into it, and the wind didn’t blow into it for it was well sheltered, and the crops that I used to take off that land would astonish you.
“I had twenty head of cattle eating the grass, and they used to get fat quick and they used to give good milk into the bargain. I had cocks and hens for the eggs and the market, and there was a good many folk would have been glad to get my farm.
“There were ten men always working on the place, but at harvesttime there would be a lot more, and I used to make them work too. Myself and my son and my wife’s brother (a lout, that fellow!) used to run after the men, but it was hard to keep up with them, for they were great schemers. They tried to do as little work as ever they were able, and they tried to get as much money out of me as they could manage. But I was up to them lads, and it’s mighty little they got out of me without giving twice as much for it.
“Bit by bit I weeded out the men until at last I only had the ones I wanted, the tried and trusty men. They were a poor lot, and they didn’t dare to look back at me when I looked at them; but they were able to work, and that is all I wanted them to do, and I saw that they did it.
“As I’m sitting beside you on this bank today I’m wondering why I took all the trouble I did take, and what, in the name of this and that, I expected to get out of it all. I usen’t go to bed until twelve o’clock at night, and I would be up in the dawn before the birds. Five o’clock in the morning never saw me stretching in the warm bed, and every day I would root the men out of their sleep; often enough I had to throw them out of bed, for there wasn’t a man of them but would have slept rings round the clock if he got the chance.
“Of course I knew that they didn’t want to work for me, and that, bating the hunger, they’d have seen me far enough before they’d lift a hand for my good; but I had them by the hasp, for as long as men have to eat, any man with the food can make them do whatever he wants them to do; wouldn’t they stand on their heads for twelve hours a day if you gave them wages? Aye would they, and eighteen hours if you held them to it.
“I had the idea too that they were trying to rob me, and maybe they were. It doesn’t seem to matter now whether they robbed me or not, for I give you my word that the man who wants to rob me today is welcome to all he can get and more if I had it.”
“Faith, you’re the kind man!” said Patsy.
“Let that be,” said Billy the Music.
“The secret of the thing was that I loved money, hard money, gold and silver pieces, and pieces of copper. I liked it better than the people who were round me. I liked it better than the cattle and the crops. I liked it better than I liked myself, and isn’t that the queer thing? I put up with the silliest ways for it, and I lived upside down and inside out for it. I tell you I would have done anything just to get money, and when I paid the men for their labour I grudged them every penny that they took from me.
“It did seem to me that in taking my metal they were surely and openly robbing me and laughing at me as they did it. I saw no reason why they shouldn’t have worked for me for nothing, and if they had I would have grudged them the food they ate and the time they lost in sleeping, and that’s another queer thing,
