“All right.” Brand spoke quietly to the dog. “Let him up.”
Flash looked at Jock, read an answer in his eyes, then left his post.
“Get up.” There was a sound like clinking steel in the English lad’s voice.
“He knocked me over,” Jock explained quietly. “That was easy enough, an’ me with but one leg. Then he went on to finish me off. He’s got astonishin’ strong hands, that lad has. He’s all for shakin’ a man. If it hadn’t been fer good auld Flash now—”
“He would have killed you.” Chilled hate was in Brand’s voice.
All of a sudden hands parted the branches of a small oak and there stood the brawny blacksmith from Warmington, the village below Ramsey Farm. He carried an antique fowling-piece.
“So you got one of ’em? That’s grand, me boys!” he approved. “Where now would you say the others be?”
By that time a dozen members of the Home Guard had gathered in.
“My friend from America, David Barnes, has one of them just up here a little way,” Brand replied.
“I’ll say you’ve done a fine job of it,” the blacksmith approved.