My resolution was strengthened a few days afterwards.  Since the morning when Roger Allardyce had first addressed me, a friendship had sprung up between us, with a rapidity only possible to boys.  We bathed together of mornings; he would come and chat to me when I was at my work; and the hours of work being over, he would lug me into a little outhouse he kept as his own, and show me his treasures—­guns, and fishing tackle, a breastplate worn by his grandfather in the Civil War, an oak-apple from the tree in which King Charles had hidden after the battle of Worcester.  He treated me as his equal, and once, when I alluded to my dependent position, his curiosity, which with excellent well-bred delicacy he kept in check, got the better of him, and he begged me to tell him all about myself, swearing never to reveal it to a soul.  But I cleaved to my determination; all I would tell him was what he knew already, that I was a penniless orphan bent on making my way in the world.

Well, one evening, when I returned from my work in the fields, I found him waiting for me with excitement plainly writ on his open face.  He dragged me to his outhouse, and having shut the door, said: 

“I say, Joe, there’s a storm brewing, and we may need your fists.  You remember I told you about my cousin riding over from Shrewsbury?  Well, his father came today—­Sir Richard Cludde, a big red-faced bully of a man.  He’s Lucy’s uncle, you know; her father was his brother, and they quarreled, and hadn’t seen each other for twenty years.  But now he declares that he is Lucy’s legal guardian; his brother died suddenly and left no will, and he came today to claim her as his ward.  Father wouldn’t hear of it; but told him Lucy had been brought here by the express command of her father, and he refused to give her up.  The squire was in a terrible rage:  ’tis said he has fallen on evil times, and is set on getting a hold on Lucy’s property in Jamaica, and making a match between her and his son Dick—­the lubber I told you of.  There was an angry scene ’twixt him and father, you could have heard him roaring all over the house, and he went away in a towering passion, swearing that we’d not heard the last of it, and he’d go to law, and he’d beat us even though it cost him his last penny, and more to the same effect.  Father makes light of it, but I know he is uneasy:  he has been several times of late to see his lawyer in Bridgenorth, and ’tis by no means clear how the law will decide.  There will be trouble, for Sir Richard is an obstinate man, and I’m glad you are here, for we are not going to let Lucy leave us, and if he comes one day to take her by force we’ll make a fight for it, Joe.  And I’ll tell you what:  you must teach me how to use my fists.  Shall we begin now, Joe?”