"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 harvest-time 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 to-day 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 to-day 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, mind you!"

"If one of them men," said Patsy solemnly, "had the spunk of a wandering goat or a mangy dog he'd have taken a graipe to yourself, mister, and he'd have picked your soul out of your body and slung it on a dung-heap."

"Don't be thinking," replied the other, "that men are courageous and fiery animals, for they're not, and every person that pays wages to men knows well that they're as timid as sheep and twice as timid. Let me tell you too that all the trouble wasn't on their side; I had a share of it and a big share."

Mac Cann interrupted solemnly—

"That's what the fox told the goose when the goose said that the teeth hurted him. 'Look at the trouble I had to catch you,' said the fox."

"We won't mind that," said Billy the Music.

"I was hard put to it to make the money. I was able to knock a good profit out of the land and the beasts and the men that worked for me; and then, when I came to turn the profit into solid pieces, I found that there was a world outside of my world, and it was truly bent on robbing me, and, what's more, it had thought hard for generations about the best way of doing it. It had made its scheme so carefully that I was as helpless among them people as the labourers were with me. Oh! they got me, and they squeezed me, and they marched off smiling with the heaviest part of my gain, and they told me to be a bit more polite or they'd break me into bits, and I was polite too. Ah! there's a big world outside the little world, and maybe there's a bigger world outside that, and grindstones in it for all the people that are squeezers in their own place.

"The price I thought fair for the crop was never the price I got from the jobbers. If I sold a cow or a horse I never got as much as half of what I reckoned on. There were rings and cliques in the markets everywhere, and they knew how to manage me. It was they who got more than half the money I made, and they had me gripped so that I couldn't get away. It was for these people I used to be out of bed at twelve o'clock at night and up again before the fowl were done snoring, and it was for them I tore the bowels out of my land, and hazed and bedevilled every man and woman and dog that came in sight of me, and when I thought of these market-men with their red jowls and their 'take it or leave it' I used to get so full of rage that I could hardly breathe.

"I had to take it because I couldn't afford to leave it, and then I'd go home again trying to cut it finer, trying to skin an extra chance profit off the land and workers, and I do wonder now that the men didn't try to kill me or didn't commit suicide. Aye, I wonder that I didn't commit suicide myself by dint of the rage and greed and weariness that was my share of life day and night.

"I got the money anyhow, and, sure enough, the people must have thought I was the devil's self; but it was little I cared what they thought, for the pieces were beginning to mount up in the box, and one fine day the box got so full that not another penny-piece could have been squeezed sideways into it, so I had to make a new box, and it wasn't so long until I made a third box and a fourth one, and I could see the time coming when I would be able to stand in with the market-men, and get a good grip on whatever might be going."

"How much did you rob in all?" said Patsy.

"I had all of two thousand pounds."

"That's a lot of money, I'm thinking."

"It is so, and it took a lot of getting, and there was twenty damns went into the box with every one of the yellow pieces."

"A damn isn't worth a shilling," said Patsy. "You can have them from me at two for a ha'penny, and there's lots of people would give them to yourself for nothing, you rotten old robber of the world! And if I had the lump of twist back that I gave you a couple of minutes ago I'd put it in my pocket, so I would, and I'd sit on it."

"Don't forget that you're talking about old things," said Billy the Music.

"If I was one of your men," shouted Patsy, "you wouldn't have treated me that way."

Billy the Music smiled happily at him.

"Wouldn't I?" said he, with his head on one side.

"You would not," said Patsy, "for I'd have broken your skull with a spade."

"If you had been one of my men," the other replied mildly, "you'd have been as tame as a little kitten; you'd have crawled round me with your hat in your hand and your eyes turned up like a dying duck's, and you'd have said, 'Yes, sir,' and 'No, sir,' like the other men that I welted the stuffing out of with my two fists, and broke the spirits of with labour and hunger. Don't be talking now, for you're an ignorant man in these things, although you did manage to steal a clocking hen off me the day I was busy."

"And a pair of good boots," said Patsy triumphantly.

"Do you want to hear the rest of the story?"

"I do so," said Patsy; "and I take back what I said about the tobacco; here's another bit of it for your pipe."

"Thank you kindly," replied Billy.

He shook the ashes from his pipe, filled it, and continued his tale.

"On the head of all these things a wonderful thing happened to me."

"That's the way to start," said Patsy approvingly. "You're a good story-teller, mister."

"It isn't so much that," replied Billy, "but it's a good story and a wonderful story."

"The potatoes are nearly done, Mary, a grah?"

"They'll be done in a short while."

"Hold your story for a few minutes until we eat the potatoes and a few collops of the rabbits, for I tell you that I'm drooping with the hunger."

"I didn't eat anything myself," replied Billy, "since the middle of yesterday, and the food there has a smell to it that's making me mad."

"It's not quite done yet," said Mary.

"It's done enough," replied her father. "Aren't you particular this day! Pull them over here and share them round, and don't be having the men dying on your hands."

Mary did so, and for five minutes there was no sound except that of moving jaws, and by that time there was no more food in sight.

"Ah!" said Patsy with a great sigh.

"Aye, indeed!" said Billy the Music with another sigh.

"Put on more of the potatoes now," Patsy commanded his daughter, "and be cooking them against the time this story will be finished."

"I wish I had twice as much as I had," said Art.

"You got twice as much as me," cried Patsy angrily, "for I saw the girl giving it to you."

"I'm not complaining," replied Art; "I'm only stating a fact."

"That's all right," said Patsy.

The pipes were lit, and all eyes turned to Billy the Music. Patsy leaned back on his elbow, and blew his cloud.

"Now we'll have the rest of the story," said he.