Well, if you won't let him be blooded, fetch some water and fling it into his face; you know where the pit is." "A pretty manoeuvre," said the woman: "leave my mard {90a} in the hands of you and that limmer, {90b} who has never been true to us: I should find him strangled or his throat cut when I came back." "Do you go," said I to the tall girl, "take the can and fetch some water from the pit." "You had better go yourself," said the girl, wiping a tear as she looked on the yet senseless form of the tinker; "you had better go yourself, if you think water will do him good." I had by this time somewhat recovered my exhausted powers, and, taking the can, I bent my steps as fast as I could to the pit; arriving there, I lay down on the brink, took a long draught, and then plunged my head into the water; after which I filled the can, and bent my way back to the dingle.

Before I could reach the path which led down into its depths, I had to pass some way along its side; I had arrived at a part immediately over the scene of the last encounter, where the bank, overgrown with trees, sloped precipitously down.

Here I heard a loud sound of voices in the dingle; I stopped, and laying hold of a tree, leaned over the bank and listened.
The two women appeared to be in hot dispute in the dingle.

"It was all owing to you, you limmer," said the vulgar woman to the other; "had you not interfered, the old man would soon have settled the boy." "I'm for fair play and Long Melford," said the other.

"If yow old man, as you call him, could have settled the boy fairly, he might, for all I should have cared, but no foul work for me; and as for sticking the boy with our gulleys {91} when he comes back, as you proposed, I am not so fond of your old man or you that I should oblige you in it, to my soul's destruction." "Hold your tongue, or I'll.