He was an undersized, foxy fellow, dressed as a gamekeeper and carrying a fowling-piece under one arm. His small eyes regarded her through narrowed lids.
"So I've caught you at last, have I," he said; "caught you red-handed."
He suddenly seized her wrist and dragged her towards him. The bright colour fled from Flamby's cheeks leaving her evenly dusky; but her grey eyes flashed dangerously.
"Poachin', eh?" sneered the gamekeeper. "Same as your father."
Deliberately, and with calculated intent, Flamby raised her right foot, shod in a clumsy, thick-soled shoe, and kicked the speaker on the knee. He uttered a half-stifled cry of pain, releasing her wrist and clenching his fist. But she leapt back from him with all the easy agility of a young antelope.
"You're a blasted liar!" she screamed, her oval face now flushing darkly so that her eyes seemed supernormally bright. "I wasn't poaching. My father may have poached, but you hadn't the pluck to try and stop him. Guy Fawkes! Why don't you go and fight like he did?"
Fawkes—for this was indeed the keeper's name—sprang at her clumsily; his knee was badly bruised. But Flamby eluded him with ease, gliding behind the trunk of a friendly oak and peering out at the enraged man elfishly.
"When are they going to burn you?" she inquired.
Fawkes laid his gun upon the ground, without removing his gaze from the flushed mocking face, and began cautiously to advance. He was a man for whom Flamby in the ordinary way entertained a profound contempt, but there was that in his slinking foxy manner which vaguely disturbed her. For long enough there had been wordy warfare between them, but to-day Flamby realised that she had aroused something within the man which had never hitherto shown upon the surface; and into his eyes had come a light which since she had passed her thirteenth year she had sometimes seen and hated in the eyes of men, but had never thought to see and fear in the eyes of Fawkes. For the first time within her memory she realised that Bluebell Hollow was a very lonely spot.
"You daren't hit me," she said, rather breathlessly. "I'd play hell."