'You may say so!' Hal pointed to a white scar on his cheekbone.
'This is a remembrance from the Master watching-Foreman of Masons
on Magdalen Tower, because, please you, I dared to carve stone without
their leave. They said a stone had slipped from the cornice by accident.'

'I know them accidents. There's no way to disprove 'em. An'
stones ain't the only things that slip,' Mr Springett grunted. Hal
went on:

'I've seen a scaffold-plank keckle and shoot a too-clever workman
thirty foot on to the cold chancel floor below. And a rope can
break -'
'Yes, natural as nature; an' lime'll fly up in a man's eyes without
any breath o' wind sometimes,' said Mr Springett. 'But who's to
show 'twasn't a accident?'

'Who do these things?' Dan asked, and straightened his back at
the bench as he turned the schooner end-for-end in the vice to get
at her counter.

'Them which don't wish other men to work no better nor
quicker than they do,' growled Mr Springett. 'Don't pinch her so
hard in the vice, Mus' Dan. Put a piece o' rag in the jaws, or you'll
bruise her. More than that'- he turned towards Hal -'if a man has
his private spite laid up against you, the Unions give him his
excuse for workin' it off.'

'Well I know it,'said Hal.