At that moment a man walked out of the wood. He was a fierce little fellow with a black mustache and a dirty red tie. His velveteen suit was worn and greasy and his hat broken.
The strange girl turned suddenly and saw him. She uttered a stifled scream and the fellow folded his arms and said something to her sternly in a language that afterwards Tess said “sounded like powder-crackers exploding!”
The girl was terrified in the extreme. She looked from side to side as though contemplating escape. The fellow took another stride toward her.
And then Tom Jonah intervened. The big dog sprang with an awful growl, hurling himself straight at the man’s chest. The fellow went over backward and Tom Jonah held him down with both paws on his chest and his bared teeth at the victim’s brown throat!
[CHAPTER XX—THE FRANKFURTER MAN]
Dot screamed shrilly; but Tess said, with conviction: “Well! I think it serves him right. Let him holler. He had no business trying to steal Ruthie’s chickens.”
For the young man that Tom Jonah held on the ground, and threatened so dreadfully, was the very Gypsy that had gotten into the hen-coop at the old Corner House in Milton, weeks before.
“Now, don’t you be afraid for him, Dot,” added Tess, quite calmly. “Tom Jonah won’t really bite him—not as long as he keeps still and doesn’t try to get up——”
The fellow was moaning and begging just as he had when the big dog “treed” him on the henhouse roof.
“Tak’ away dog! Tak’ away dog!” he begged.