"They call me Saskia. This," nodding to the chair, "is my cousin Eugènie.... We are in very great trouble. But why should I tell you? I do not know you. You cannot help me."
"We can try," said Heritage. "Part of your trouble we know already through that boy. You are imprisoned in this place by scoundrels. We are here to help you to get out. We want to ask no questions—only to do what you bid us."
"You are not strong enough," she said sadly. "A young man—an old man—and a little boy. There are many against us, and any moment there may be more."
It was Dougal's turn to break in. "There's Lean and Spittal and Dobson and four tinklers in the Dean—that's seven; but there's us three and five more Gorbals Die-Hards—that's eight."
There was something in the boy's truculent courage that cheered her.
"I wonder," she said, and her eyes fell on each in turn.
Dickson felt impelled to intervene.
"I think this is a perfectly simple business. Here's a lady shut up in this house against her will by a wheen blagyirds. This is a free country and the law doesn't permit that. My advice is for one of us to inform the police at Auchenlochan and get Dobson and his friends took up and the lady set free to do what she likes. That is, if these folks are really molesting her, which is not yet quite clear to my mind."
"Alas! It is not so simple as that," she said. "I dare not invoke your English law, for perhaps in the eyes of that law I am a thief."
"Deary me, that's a bad business," said the startled Dickson.