“All right! I don’t mind; but I shan’t be happy till I have a watch.”
“That’s what you used to say about Magglin’s take-to-pieces gun, but you never got it, and you’ve been happy enough without.”
“Oh, have I?” said Mercer. “You don’t know. I used to long for that gun.”
Two or three days afterwards, in one of our strolls, when we were both coming back laden with odds and ends for the museum up in the loft, Mercer proposed that we should cross a field and get into the lower lane, so as to call at Polly Hopley’s to get something to eat.
I was nothing loth, and we struck off across country, got into the lane about a couple of hundred yards from the keeper’s lodge, and then suddenly stopped short.
“Hush!” I said, as shouts and cries reached our ears.
“There’s something the matter,” cried Mercer. “Come on.”
We set off at a run, and as we passed a bend in the lane, we came full in sight of the keeper’s cottage, and saw him in the middle of the road, holding a rough-looking figure by the collar, keeping it down upon its knees, while he vigorously used a stick upon the object’s back, in spite of cries and protestations, till there was a sudden wrench, and whoever it was dragged himself away and ran down the lane, Polly Hopley standing at the cottage door laughing, while her father wiped his brow with the sleeve of his coat.
“Hullo, young gents!” he cried. “You were just too late to see the fun.”
“Saw some of it, Bob,” I said. “But who was it?”