"I doubt if he'd sell it, squire; 'twould go hard with him if he did," returned she, her motherly heart throbbing fast.
"He's my father's already," put in young Ru.
"Nay, Sir, the creature was a gift to my son."
"And I offer a fair price for it, so it is doubly mine, as it were."
"Yes, but I can't say yes or no without speaking to the lad," pleaded the gentle mother.
"Well, speak to him," returned squire Barlow, which she did, and the boy shed such a torrent of tears over his pet, that night, when he shut him up in the outhouse, as fairly to startle him.
Sorrowful days followed, after sending his refusal to the Hall, while they waited, and dared not mention the matter to the shepherd, sick nigh to death. And oh! frost and snow lay on the ground, but Spottie nestled and revelled in his hay.
"If you refuse to sell the lamb, you quit my cottage," this was the threat the angered squire sent them.
"The lad simply defies me—it is not the first ill turn he has played me," so he reasoned in his blindness and loftiness, while poor Jep's heart was well-nigh breaking. Still he never flinched or yielded, but locked the innocent lamb into the outhouse, and carried the key in his pocket.