"What do you want?" he asked, looking askance at me;
and as I went out, I heard him bolt the door behind me. Alas! he was
afraid--afraid that I was come to snatch his daily bread from him. His
wife was a big-boned fleshy lump of a woman, insolent enough in her
ways, though she had just been in prison for criminal abetment in the
case of a girl that had got into trouble.
One Sunday morning I was standing looking at some apple trees in bloom
in his garden. One of them grew so close to the fence that the branches
hung over on my side, and I bent one down to smell the blossom. Then
suddenly I heard a cry: "Hi, Tiger! catch him!" and the brazier's great
wolf-dog came bounding down, ready to fly at my throat. I was lucky
enough to get hold of its collar before it could do me any harm, and I
dragged it up to its owner, and told him that if anything of the sort
happened again I'd have the sheriff's officer after him. Then the music
began. He fairly let himself go and told me what he thought of me. "You
hold your jaw, you cursed pauper, coming here taking the bread out
of honest working people's mouths," and so on. He hissed it out,
flourishing his arms about, and at last it seemed to me he was fumbling
about for a knife or something to throw at my head. I couldn't help
laughing. It was a scene in the grand style between two Great Powers in
the world-competition.
A couple of days later I was standing at the forge, when I heard a
shriek from my wife.
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