'll wish her cake dough if so be she's over
intimate with that man.«
    »She's not over intimate with him,« said Gabriel indignantly.
    »She would know better,« said Coggan. »Our mis'ess has too much sense under
they knots of black hair to do such a mad thing.«
    »You see, he's not a coarse, ignorant man, for he was well brought up,« said
Matthew dubiously. »'Twas only wildness that made him a soldier, and maids
rather like your man of sin.«
    »Now, Cain Ball,« said Gabriel restlessly, »can you swear in the most awful
form that the woman you saw was Miss Everdene?«
    »Cain Ball, you be no longer a babe and suckling,« said Joseph in the
sepulchral tone the circumstances demanded, »and you know what taking an oath
is. 'Tis a horrible testament mind ye, which you say and seal with your
blood-stone, and the prophet Matthew tells us that on whomsoever it shall fall
it will grind him to powder. Now, before all the work-folk here assembled, can
you swear to your words as the shepherd asks ye?«
    »Please no, Mister Oak!« said Cainy, looking from one to the other with
great uneasiness at the spiritual magnitude of the position. »I don't mind
saying 'tis true, but I don't like to say 'tis damn true, if that's what you
mane.«
    »Cain, Cain, how can you!« asked Joseph sternly. »You be asked to swear in a
holy manner, and you swear like wicked Shimei, the son of Gera, who cursed as he
came. Young man, fie!«
    »No, I don't! 'Tis you want to squander a pore boy's soul, Joseph Poorgrass
- that's what 'tis!« said Cain, beginning to cry. »All I mane is that in common
truth 'twas Miss Everdene and Sergeant Troy, but in the horrible so-help-me
truth that ye want to make of it perhaps 'twas somebody else!«
    »There's no getting at the rights of it,« said Gabriel, turning to his work.
    »Cain Ball, you'll come to a bit of bread!« groaned Joseph Poorgrass.
    Then the reapers' hooks were flourished again, and the old sounds went on.
Gabriel, without making any pretence of being lively, did nothing to show
