Of the King’s Treasure
angered me to see him whimpering and maybe setting silly notions allow in the lad’s head.
But Zacchary, as it turned out, was game enough. “Come out of that, Dan,” he says, laughing. “Fetch out old Blood-Drinker, and let’s see his temper. Stab us all, Dan, but we’re more than the match of King James’s scum.”
“There’s sense,” says I, well enough pleased, “and there’s spirit, too; and the sooner you come by your own again, the better for us all, Dan.”
“You’ll have your belly full soon enough, young fellow,” says Dan, with a sneer, turning on Zacchary. “’Tis not the cock that crows the loudest as uses his spurs best. And as for you, Dick Ryder, you know I’m no white liver, and I’ll trouble you to take back those words.”
“Sink me, Danny, I’ll swallow ’em whole,” said I, laughing, “if ’twill serve to set you in your stirrups again.” But he looked very nasty, and so I took him by the arm aside, and, “Look’ee,” I says, “don’t go for to spoil the spirit of Zacchary there. The boy’s willing:
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