“Yes, he told me he’d let you have an ounce of small shot, but only in the legs of course.”
“Oo!” said Smiley-face. “And me that tender, what with thorn and nettle and the midges.”
“You’d better come down,” Jim advised. “He’s after you now; and you can see I myself haven’t got my gun with me, or I’d pepper you too.”
The man descended the tree, talking incoherently as he swung from branch to branch. Presently he dropped to the ground from one of the lower boughs, and stood grinning before Jim, a dirty, ragged creature without a point to commend him.
“Fairly cotched I am,” he declared. “But I knows a gen’l’man when I sees un. I knows when it’s safe and when it baint. If I was to run now, d’you reckon you could catch I, sir?”
For answer Jim’s lean arm shot out, and his hand gripped hold of the handkerchief knotted around the man’s neck. Smiley-face swung his fist round, but the blow missed; and Jim, who had learnt a trick or two from a little Jap in California, tripped him up with ease, and the next moment was kneeling upon his chest.
“What about that, Smiley-face?” he asked, laughing.
“Wonderful!” replied the poacher. “I should never ha’ thought it.”
Jim rose to his feet. “Get up,” he said, “and let me hear what you’ve got to say for yourself.” Then, as the man did as he was bid, he added: “If Pegett comes along, you can slip through that gate and across my garden. Nobody will see you.”
Smiley-face grinned. “Thank’ee kindly, sir,” he said, touching his forelock. “I knew you was a kind gen’l’man.”