But Mademoiselle never paused to answer her father. Seeing the
executioner proceeding, despite her call to cease, she sprang upon
him, caught him by the arms and wrested the whip from hands that
dared not resist her.

"Did I not bid you stop?" she blazed, her face white, her eyes on
fire; and raising the whip she brought it down upon his head and
shoulders, not once but half-a-dozen times in quick succession,
until he fled, howling, to the other side of the horse trough for
shelter. "It stings you, does it" she cried, whilst the Marquis,
from angered that at first he had been, now burst into a laugh at
her fury and at this turning of tables upon the executioner. She
made shift to pursue the fellow to his place of refuge, but
coming of a sudden upon the ghastly sight presented by La Boulaye's
lacerated back, she drew back in horror. Then, mastering herself
- for girl though she was, her courage was of a high order - she
turned to her father.

"Give this man to me, Monsieur," she begged.

"To you!" he exclaimed. "What will you do with him?"

"I will see that you are rid of him," she promised. "What more can
you desire? You have tortured him enough."

"Maybe. But am I to blame that he dies so hard?"

She answered him with renewed insistence, and unexpectedly she
received an ally in M. des Cadoux - an elderly gentleman who had