The Bars of Iron | Page 5

brutal thrashing and wholly undeserved. Caesar, awaking to the horror of it, howled his anguish; but no amount of protest on his part made the smallest impression upon the wielder of the whip. It continued to descend upon his writhing body with crashing force till he rolled upon the ground in agony.
Even then the punishment would not have ceased, but for a second interruption. It was the woman from the Vicarage garden again; but she burst upon the scene this time with something of the effect of an avalanche. She literally whirled between the man and his victim. She caught his upraised arm.
"Oh, you brute!" she cried. "You brute!"
He stiffened in her hold. They stood face to face. Caesar crept whining and shivering to the side of the road.
Slowly the man's arm fell to his side, still caught in that quivering grasp. He spoke in a voice that struggled boyishly between resentment and shame. "The dog's my own."
Her hold relaxed. "Even a dog has his rights," she said. "Give me that whip, please!"
He looked at her oddly in the growing darkness. She was trembling as she stood, but she held her ground.
"Please!" she repeated with resolution.
With an abrupt movement he put the weapon into her hand. "Are you going to give me a taste?" he asked.
She uttered a queer little gasping laugh. "No. I--I'm not that sort. But--it's horrible to see a man lose control of himself. And to thrash a dog--like that!"
She turned sharply from him and went to the Dalmatian who crouched quaking on the path. He wagged an ingratiating tail at her approach. It was evident that in her hand the whip had no terrors for him. He crept fawning to her feet.
She stooped over him, fondling his head. "Oh, poor boy! Poor boy!" she said.
The dog's master came and stood beside her. "He'll be all right," he said, in a tone of half-surly apology.
"I'm afraid Mike has bitten him," she said. "See!" displaying a long, dark streak on Caesar's neck.
"He'll be all right," repeated Caesar's master. "I hope your dog is none the worse."
"No, I don't think so," she said. "But don't you think we ought to bathe this?"
"I'll take him home," he said. "They'll see to him at the stables."
She stood up, a slim, erect figure, the whip still firmly grasped in her hand. "You won't thrash him any more, will you?" she said.
He gave a short laugh. "No, you have cooled me down quite effectually. I'm much obliged to you for interfering. And I'm sorry I used language, but as the circumstances were exceptional, I hope you will make allowances."
His tone was boyish still, but all the resentment had gone out of it. There was a touch of arrogance in his bearing which was obviously natural to him, but his apology was none the less sincere.
The slim figure on the path made a slight movement of dismay. "But you must be drenched to the skin!" she said. "I was forgetting. Won't you come in and get dry?"
He hunched his shoulders expressively. "No, thanks. It was my own fault, as you kindly omit to mention. I must be getting back to the Abbey. My grandfather is expecting me. He fidgets if I'm late."
He raised a hand to his cap, and would have turned away, but she made a swift gesture of surprise, which arrested him. "Oh, you are young Mr. Evesham!--I beg your pardon--you are Mr. Evesham! I thought I must have seen you before!"
He stopped with a laugh. "I am commonly called 'Master Piers' in this neighbourhood. They won't let me grow up. Rather a shame, what? I'm nearly twenty-five, and the head-keeper still refers to me in private as 'that dratted boy.'"
She laughed for the first time. Possibly he had angled for that laugh. "Yes, it is a shame!" she agreed. "But then Sir Beverley is rather old, isn't he? No doubt it's the comparison that does it."
"He isn't old," said Piers Evesham in sharp contradiction. "He's only seventy-four. That's not old for an Evesham. He'll go for another twenty years. There's a saying in our family that if we don't die violently, we never die at all." He pulled himself up abruptly. "I've given you my name and history. Won't you tell me yours?"
She hesitated momentarily. "I am only the mother's help at the Vicarage," she said then.
"By Jove! I don't envy you." He looked at her with frank interest notwithstanding. "I suppose you do it for a living," he remarked. "Personally, I'd sooner sweep a crossing than live in the same house with that mouthing parson."
"Hush!" she said, but her lips smiled as she said it, a small smile that would not be denied. "I must go in now. Here you are!" She gave him back his whip. "Good-bye! Get home