The Wee Free Men

that man is hanged. A starving man who steals his lord’s sheep, that man is hanged. A dog that kills sheep, that dog is put to death. Those laws are on these hills and these hills are in my bones. What is a baron, that the law be brake for him?”
    She went back to staring at the sheep.
    “The Baron owns this country,” said the servant. “It is his law.”
    The look Granny Aching gave him turned the man’s hair white. That was the story, anyway. But all stories about Granny Aching had a bit of fairy tale about them.
    “If it is, as ye say, his law, then let him break it and see how things may then be,” she said.
    A few hours later the Baron sent his bailiff, who was far more important but had known Granny Aching for longer. He said: “Mrs. Aching, the Baron requests that you use your influence to save his dog. He will happily give you fifty gold dollars to help ease this difficult situation. I am sure you can see how this will benefit everyone concerned.”
    Granny smoked her pipe and stared at the new lambs and said: “Ye speak for your master, your master speaks for his dog. Who speaks for the hills? Where is the Baron, that the law be brake for him?”
    They said that when the Baron was told this, he went very quiet. But although he was pompous, and often unreasonable, and far too haughty, he was not stupid. In the evening he walked up to the hut and sat down on the turf nearby. After a while Granny Aching said: “Can I help you, my lord?”
    “Granny Aching, I plead for the life of my dog,” said the Baron.
    “Bring ye siller? Bring ye gilt?” said Granny Aching.
    “No silver. No gold,” said the Baron.
    “Good. A law that is brake by siller or gilt is no worthwhile law. And so, my lord?”
    “I plead, Granny Aching.”
    “Ye try to break the law with a word?”
    “That’s right, Granny Aching.”
    Granny Aching, the story went, stared at the sunset for a while and then said: “Then be down at the little old stone barn at dawn tomorrow, and we’ll see if an old dog can learn new tricks. There will be a reckoning. Good night to ye.”
    Most of the village was hanging around the old stone barn the next morning. Granny arrived with one of the smaller farm wagons. It held a ewe with her newborn lamb. She put them in the barn.
    Some of the men turned up with the dog. It was nervous and snappy, having spent the night chained up in a shed, and kept trying to bite the men who were holding it by two leather straps. It was hairy. It had fangs.
    The Baron rode up with the bailiff. Granny Aching nodded at them and opened the barn door.
    “You’re putting the dog into the barn with a sheep, Mrs. Aching?” said the bailiff. “Do you want it to choke to death on lamb?”
    This didn’t get much of a laugh. No one liked the bailiff much.
    “We shall see,” said Granny. The men dragged the dog to the doorway, threw it inside the barn, and slammed the door quickly. People rushed to the little windows.
    There was the bleating of the lamb, a growl from the dog, and then a baa from the lamb’s mother. But this wasn’t the normal baa of a sheep. It had an edge to it.
    Something hit the door and it bounced on its hinges. Inside, the dog yelped.
    Granny Aching picked up Tiffany and held her to a window.
    The shaken dog was trying to get to its feet, but it didn’t manage it before the ewe charged again, seventy pounds of enraged sheep slamming into it like a battering ram.
    Granny lowered Tiffany again and lit her pipe. She puffed it peacefully as the building behind her shook and the dog yelped and whimpered.
    After a couple of minutes she nodded at the men. They opened the door.
    The dog came out limping on three legs, but it hadn’t managed to get more than a few feet before the ewe shot out behind it and butted it so hard that it rolled over.
    It lay still. Perhaps it had learned what would happen if it tried to get up again.
    Granny Aching had nodded to the men, who picked the sheep up and dragged it back into the barn.
    The Baron had been watching with his mouth open.
    “He killed a wild boar last year!” he said. “What did you do to him?”
    “He’ll mend,” said Granny Aching, carefully ignoring the question. “’Tis mostly his pride that’s hurt. But he won’t look at a sheep again, you have my thumb on that.” And she licked her right thumb and held it out.
    After a moment’s hesitation, the Baron licked his thumb, reached down, and pressed it against hers. Everyone knew what it