"I was coming to that," David went on. "The dog came nearer and nearer, and I'm sure that if he'd got to us we'd have had a bad time. But our luck held because the men were so mad about the burst tyre and the gipsies they thought had done it, that they just didn't or wouldn't believe that the dog meant business and that we - or anyone else - could possibly be inside the van. You go on now, Jon."

"I shan't tell this better than David," he began, "but there is one thing we ought to say now. While the men were muttering and cursing outside we did hear the one who came from the house say that the van wheel would have to be changed as it would be wanted later to take more sheep out. Anyway, after they had dragged the dog away they started up the engine again and the van limped across to what we knew later was a big garage."

Jon turned to Mr Cantor.

"Are we telling you what you want to know, sir? Stop us if we're not... All right. Good!... I s'pose it took them about half an hour to get the wheel off and mend two punctures. It was clear, however, that the men were scared stiff of someone they called the boss. You'll see that we were in a real mess and there wasn't much we could do, because all this time the van was never left alone. We did manage to force open the big doors a bit so that we could see outside. As soon as the wheel was changed the driver said he'd move the van over on to the drive again, and we guessed he did this because it was nearer the sheep pens - of course, we didn't know - about the sheep pens until we saw them from the back of the van. When the driver made his way back to the house his mate came running across and pointed to the walls about forty yards away from us... The moon was very bright, you'll remember, and we could see all this clearly, but you can guess how excited we were when we saw sheep coming up out of a hole in the ground. There was a sheep dog, too, and the sheep were driven into the pens by the men, and we heard one of them say they wouldn't be able to get away for another two hours.