“He has the looks on him,” said the other, prudently.
“Sir Henry’s dining at Chigwell to-night, and he’ll have started afore we get there,” continued Big George. “Go you on through spinney far as Edge Pool, and I’ll take and lock this here Radley up till morning. Blast his impudence,—a pheasant! think of the likes of it! A pheasant! If ’t had been a rabbit, ’t had been bad enough.”
Then he shook his little captive vigorously.
Bertie did not say anything. He was not in trepidation for himself, but he was in an agony of fear lest the other boy should be found in the spinney.
“March along afore me,” said Big George, with much savageness. “And if you tries to bolt, I’ll blow your brains out and nail you to a barn-door along o’ the owls.”
The little Earl looked at him with eyes of scorn and horror.
“How dare you touch Athene’s bird?”
“How dare I what, you little saucy blackguard?” thundered Big George, and fetched him a great box on the ears which made Bertie stagger.
“You are a very bad man,” he said, breathlessly. “You are a very mean man. You are big, and so you are cruel: that is very mean indeed.”
“You’ve the gift of the gab, little devil of a Radley,” said the keeper, wrathfully; “but you’ll pipe another tune when you feel the birch and pick oakum.”