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job, any road,’ he said. ‘There was one or two as I was a bit doubtful about but I reckon they’re all in calf now.’
    As he spoke, the Angus bull sauntered by, his black coat gleaming in the sunshine. ‘Lucky old bagger, aren’t you?’ said Percy. ‘So many wives as Solomon,’ and the bull rolled an eye at him in passing, comically, as though he understood.
    Master and man walked on across the down to look at the next group of springers, the farmer curbing his long strides to accommodate the limping pace of the other. The downland stretched away endlessly, the sky was as blue as athrush’s egg, there was no sound but the singing of skylarks. No scene could have been more peaceful.
    â€˜I’ve been meaning to ask you, Percy,’ said Mister.‘How’s that boy of the Sparrows? I haven’t set eyes on him for a dog’s age.’
    â€˜Kathie keeps him tied tight to her apron-strings these days,’ said Percy. ‘On account of some of the village boys.’
    â€˜Tease him, do they? Call him names?’
    â€˜T’was a bit more than that, back in the spring,’ Percy said. ‘There’s a gang of them go round together, kids of twelve or thirteen, and they frightened the life out of Tom and Kathie’s boy.’
    â€˜How?’ asked Mister. ‘What did they do?’
    â€˜They hunted him, sir,’ said Percy.
    â€˜Hunted him? What d’you mean?’
    â€˜Well, it seems that Spider had been out in the garden and I suppose Kathie wasn’t keeping as sharp an eye on him as she did when he was little – he’s ten now, after all – and she looked out and he’d gone. She went off down the village, thinking he might have gone there, but when she got back, she found him hiding under the kitchen table. Shaking like a leaf he was, Kath said, and his clothes all torn and dirty, and cow-muck all overhis face. She couldn’t get anything out of him – all he could say was “Bad boys! Bad boys!” A lorry driver I met told me he’d seen this gang of kids out in the fields, didn’t know who they were of course, and he’d stopped his lorry to watch. They were all chasing another kid. They must have come across Spider wandering about and thought they’d have a bit of fun with him. They were all barking, like a pack of hounds, and shouting “Tally-ho” and “Gone away!” and all that, and then they’d catch up with him – he can’t run fast, Spider can’t – and push him over and stand round him laughing, and some of them growling and pretending to tear at him.’
    â€˜Like hounds at a worry!’ said Mister.
    â€˜Yes, and then he’d get up and stumble away, the lorry driver said, and they’d do it again. Till they got tired of it and left him, but not before they’d pushed his face in a cowpat.’
    â€˜Wicked little devils!’ said Mister.
    â€˜It’s the same with animals, isn’t it, sir?’ said Percy. ‘They’ll always turn on one of their own sort if it’s weak or crippled.’
    This last word led the farmer to say ‘Knee bothering you much these days, Percy?’
    â€˜No sir,’ said Percy. ‘Not to speak of. Alwaysbetter this sort of weather. It’s cold and wet it doesn’t like.’
    â€˜How long is it now since you got your Blighty?’ Mister asked.
    â€˜Twenty years.’
    â€˜I was one of the lucky ones, I never got a scratch.’
    â€˜They’re saying we might have to do it all over again,’ said Percy. ‘The way this Hitler bloke is going on.’
    â€˜Except that it won’t be us the next time,’ said Major Yorke. ‘It’ll be our sons, your boy and my boy, they’ll be just of an age, as we were, by the look of things. The Great War, they call our one. Wonder what they’ll call the next one.’
    â€˜You reckon