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The sheep-dealer seemed to speak in a great hurry, for he could scarcely breathe in his excitement; neither did he finish his sentence, for the driver entered the stable at that moment, and Rico went up to him at once, saying, "I want to thank you for bringing me along with you." "You have come just in the nick of time.
It all came back to Rico's memory with great distinctness, how he had stood there in the night, quite alone, after the students had all gone their ways; and opposite he espied the stable-door where he had seen the lantern hanging, and had found the friendly sheep-dealer again. It was evening now; and they took their places at once in the coach, and went towards the mountain.
I heard you here, inside the coach; and my business is also with sheep, for, you know, I am a sheep-dealer; and I want to give you something, because you can sing about them so prettily." With these words he put a big piece of silver in Rico's hand, for the cap had been emptied by this time, and the contents transferred to the boy's pocket.
Probably the sheep-dealer did not recognize the little fiddler in the darkness; but suddenly he exclaimed, quite surprised, "What! is that you, little one? Where are you going to pass the night?" "I do not know where," replied the boy. "Well, I never heard of such a thing; at eleven o'clock at night, and a little scrap of a boy like you in a strange place"
At that point the sheep-dealer spoke, just a little too late. "Get out o' that!" he said, with a thrust of his staff at Jan. And "Come in here, Grip," he added to his own dog. But his orders came too late. For his part, Jan had lost blood and realized that he was attacked in fierce earnest. As for Grip, he had tasted blood, and found it as balm to his aching ribs.
You understand, don't you?" The sheep-dealer thought of the stories he had heard of lost or stolen children. He looked with pity at Rico, standing in the dim light of the lantern, and said, "He does look as if he were not in exactly the clothes that belong to him. He would become a richer dress, I am sure. I will take him with me."
The man was David Crumplin, the sheep-dealer, and the dog was Grip, whose reputation, all unknown though it was to Jan, reached from the Romney marshes to the Solent; even as his sire's had carried weight from York to the Border. Grip's dam, so the story went, had been a gipsy's lurcher with Airedale blood in her.
Aeschines tells us also, that Lysicles, a sheep-dealer, a man of low birth and character, by keeping Aspasia company after Pericles's death, came to be a chief man in Athens.
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