It was Dougal's turn to break in, "There's Lean and Spittal and
Dobson and four tinklers in the Dean--that's seven; but there's us
three and five more Gorbals Die-hards--that's eight."

There was something in the boy's truculent courage that cheered her.

"I wonder," she said, and her eyes fell on each in turn.

Dickson felt impelled to intervene.

"I think this is a perfectly simple business. Here's a lady shut up
in this house against her will by a wheen blagyirds. This is a free
country and the law doesn't permit that. My advice is for one of us
to inform the police at Auchenlochan and get Dobson and his friends
took up and the lady set free to do what she likes. That is, if
these folks are really molesting her, which is not yet quite clear
to my mind."

"Alas! It is not so simple as that," she said. "I dare not invoke
your English law, for perhaps in the eyes of that law I am a thief."

"Deary me, that's a bad business," said the startled Dickson.

The two women talked together in some strange tongue, and the elder
appeared to be pleading and the younger objecting. Then Saskia
seemed to come to a decision.

"I will tell you all," and she looked straight at Heritage. "I do
not think you would be cruel or false, for you have honourable faces..