He was running, out from the gate and into the fields, across the stubble. Jackson’s men had a digger there to dig up the hedges, a huge digger of a kind he had never seen before, with caterpillar tracks. The digger was so big and noisy that they didn’t hear him shouting. They didn’t even see him until he picked up a stone and threw it. It was a sharp broken flint and he threw it hard. He was aiming at the machine not at the men but one of the men was hit. The man put up his hand to his head and there was blood. He turned and ran for home.

How could you let him do it? he shouted at his mother. She was in the kitchen as usual, and Jonny was in there, sitting at the table with a glass of milk. Jonny had got down almost OK, only when he got to the bottom branch he jumped wrong and landed badly, twisting his ankle. He was probably going too fast, panicking, that was like Jonny. Maybe it hurt a lot. Maybe it wasn’t really so bad. Maybe he would have pulled himself together and come after, if there had been any hope of catching up. Or maybe he didn’t want to be implicated. He could see Jonny had been crying. He didn’t cry. He was only angry. Angry and hard and sharp and dry-eyed like a hawk. Angry at Jackson and angry at his mother for letting Jackson do what he had done to their land, his father’s land. How could you let that happen?

It’s how things are, his mother said. He’s just a farmer doing his job. That’s what farmers do nowadays. Later she drove him over to Jackson’s to apologise. He did what she said. He got out of the car and stood at Jackson’s front door and said the words but he kept his fists clenched and his eyes dry.

After that Jackson wouldn’t have him out on the farm, or not for a year or two, until he was old enough to show that he was sensible and could do a job of work as a barn boy. Billy got a new rope and put it up on the tree, and he got some planks and made a lookout platform, but Richard hardly ever used it. Jonny took to going there with a book to read. It was his place after that, a place for little boys and not for hawks.