"Can't pitch for beans," said Ling as the first shoe went wide. When the second fell beside it, the crowd laughed. "Now," said Ian Cameron, "he'll be mad wi' vainglory. He's a camstearlie ring' it an' a claverin' fu'." "Ho! larf ahead!" snapped the giant. "'Ow's a man to 'eave a bloody thing at a bloody stike?" The experts chuckled, and he ruffled about the ring, truculent, sneering, pausing before Varian, with a glance at Sanford. "Give me something with some balance. Hi can show yer. Look!" "I'm looking," said the foreman; "an' I ain't deaf, neither." "'Ere's wot you blighters carn't 'eave. Learned it in Auckland, where there's _real_ men." He fumbled in his shirt, and the mare snorted as the eight-inch blade flashed out of its handle under her nose. "See? That's the lidy! Now watch! There's a knot-'ole up the palings there." The crowd fixed a stare on the green, solid barrier, and the knife soared a full twenty yards, but missed the knot-hole and rattled down. There was flat derision in the following laughter, and Percival dug his heel in the sod. "Larf ahead! Hany one else try 'er?" "Oh, shut up!" said some one across the ring. "We're pitchin' shoes." Percival slouched off after his knife, and the frieze of small boys scattered except a lint-haired Cameron who was nursing a stray cat busily, cross-legged against the green boarding. "Yon's Robert Sanford Cameron," said the smith. "He can say half his catechism." "Good kid," said Sanford. "I never could get any--" Percival had wandered back and stood a yard off, glaring at Bill as the largest object near. "Think I can't, wot?" "I'm not interested, and you're spoiling the game," said Bill, who feared nothing alive except germs, and could afford to disregard most of these. Sanford's fingers tightened on his whip. "Ho!" coughed the cockney. "See! You--there!" Robert Cameron looked up at the shout. The blade shot between the child's head and the kitten and hummed gently, quivering in the wood. "Hi could 'a' cut 'is throat," said Percival so complacently that Sanford boiled. "You scared him stiff," he choked. "You hog! Don't--" "'Ello, 'oo's the young dook?" "Look out," said a voice. "That's San, the--" "Ho! 'Im with the Hirish gal to 'elp 'im tike 'is bloody barth nights? 'Oo's _he_? She's a--" A second later Sanford knew that he had struck the man over the face with his whip, cutting the phrase. The mare plunged and the whole crowd congested about the bellowing cockney as Bill held Cameron back, and huge Jansen planted a hand on Rawling's chest. "No worry," he said genially. "Yim an' us, Boss, our job." Varian had wedged his hawk face close to the cockney's, now purple blotched with wrath, and Rawling waited. "Come to the office an' get your pay. You hear? Then you clear out. If you ain't off the property in an hour you'll be dead. You hear?"