"We've heered all on you a going on and pecking about the dree-ern being made.

We know yow all hates our being here, so how do we know it warn't yow ?" The man's fierce address was received with an angry outburst by the men, who had come out on purpose to inflict punishment upon some one, and in their excitement, one object failing, they were ready to snatch at another.
It was perhaps an insensate trick; but there was so much of the frank manly British boy in Dick Winthorpe that he forgot everything in the fact that big Hickathrift, the man he had known from a child--the great bluff fellow who had carried him in his arms and hundreds of times made him welcome in that wonderland, his workshop, where he was always ready to leave off lucrative work to fashion him eel-spear or leaping-pole, or to satisfy any other whim that was on the surface--that this old friend was being menaced by a great savage of a stranger nearly as big as himself, and backed by a roaring excited crowd who seemed ready for any outrage.
Dick did not hesitate a moment, but with eyes flashing, teeth clenched, and fists doubled, he leaped down from the stone, rushed into the midst of the crowd, closing round the wheelwright, and darting between the great fellow and the man who had raised a pick-handle to strike, seized hold of the stout piece of ash and tried to drag it away.
"You great coward!" he roared--"a hundred to one!" It was as if the whole gang had been turned to stone, their self-constituted leader being the most rigid of the crowd, and he stared at Dick Winthorpe as a giant might stare at the pigmy who tried to snatch his weapon away.
But the silence and inert state lasted only a few seconds, before the black-bearded fellow's angry face began to pucker up, his eyes half closed, and, bending down, he burst into a hearty roar of laughter.
"See this, lads!" he cried.

"See this! Don't hurt me, mester! Say, lads, I never felt so scared in my life." The leader's laugh was contagious, and the crowd took it up in chorus; but the more they laughed, the more angry grew Dick.

He could not see the ridiculous side of the matter; for, small as was his body in comparison with that of the man he had assailed, his spirit had swollen out as big as that of anyone present.
"I don't care," he cried; "I'll say it again--You're a set of great cowards; and as for you," he cried to the fellow whose weapon he had tried to wrest away, "you're the biggest of the lot." "Well done, young un--so he is!" cried the nearest man.

"Hooray for young ganger!" The men were ready to fight or cheer, and as ready to change their mood as crowds always are.