“Stop outside, Lupe, my lad,” said the old soldier, quietly; and the dog turned back to his former position and crouched once more, while the door was shut from the inside, the six boys backing to the far side, beyond the great stone hewn-out press, empty now, dry and clean, for the time of grape harvest was not yet.
“Now then, my fine fellows,” growled Serge; “you want to fight, do you?”
“We want to go,” half whimpered the one who acted as spokesman.
“Oh, yes, you want to go,” said the old soldier; “of course. Well, you shall go soon, but you wanted to fight young Marcus here, and you didn’t play fair.”
“Never touched him till he came at us,” cried another.
“So I suppose,” said Serge. “Very hard on you! Six nice boys! Interfered, did he, when you were breaking down the vines and stealing the grapes?”
“They warn’t ripe,” whimpered another.
“Then they ought to have been, seeing that you wanted them,” cried Serge, indignantly, while Marcus laughed. “But as they weren’t ripe, of course, it made you cross, and you began to fight young Marcus here.”
None of the boys spoke, but gazed longingly at the door.
“Ah! You see it ain’t fastened inside,” said Serge, mockingly; “but it is fastened outside with dog’s teeth. I wouldn’t advise you to try to get out, because our dog, Lupus, doesn’t like boys, and he’s hungry. Nothing he’d like better than to eat such a chap as one of you. But you know that, and you wouldn’t have come, only you’d seen me go off to the forest with him to herd up the young swine. Didn’t know that we should be back so soon. You see, the young swine were just at the edge.”