“Well done, Joe!” muttered Gwyn, who felt that his dog was safe; and he ran to the end of the bank of prickly growth, where there was an opening, and suddenly appeared upon the scene.
It was all just as he had pictured; there was Joe Jollivet, with Grip close to his legs, barking angrily and making short rushes, and there, a few yards away, stood the big, swarthy stranger who had been caught at the mine mouth, and whom Gwyn believed to have tampered with the furnace door, now standing with a big stone of eight or ten pounds’ weight, ready to hurl at the dog if attacked.
“Here, you put down that stone,” cried Gwyn, angrily. “How dare you threaten my dog!”
“Stone aren’t yours,” said the man, tauntingly. “This ground don’t belong to you. Keep your mongrel cur quiet.”
“My dog wouldn’t interfere with you if you let it alone.”
“Oh, it’s your dog, is it?” said the man. “Well, take him home and chain him up. I don’t want to flatten his head, but I jolly soon will if he comes at me.”
“He couldn’t hit Grip,” said Joe, maliciously, as he bent down to pat and encourage the dog. “Set him at the fellow—he has no business here.”
“What!” cried the fellow, who looked a man of three or four-and-thirty, but talked like a boy of their own age. “Much right here as you have. You let me alone, and I’ll let you alone. What business have you to set your beastly dog at me?”
“Who set him at you?” cried Joe. “He only barked at you—he saw you were a stranger—and you picked up a stone, and that, of course, made him mad.”
“So would you pick up a stone, if a savage dog came at you. Look at him now, showing his sharp teeth. On’y wish I had his head screwed up in a carpenter’s bench. I’d jolly soon get the pinchers and nip ’em all out. He wouldn’t have no more toothache while I knew him.”