"I'll whip you for this," said Martin sternly.

"Oh, please!" protested Rose, gathering the child closer. "Can't
you see he's had a bitter enough lesson? His little heart is
full."

"He's got to learn, once and for all, not to meddle with the
stock. Come here."

"No! I won't have it. I'll see to it that he never does a thing
like this again. He's too young to understand. He's never been
struck in his life. You shan't."

Martin's cold blue eyes looked icily into his wife's blazing gray
ones. "Don't act like a fool. Suppose he had gotten in there
himself, and had fallen down --do you think she'd have waited to
kill him? Where'd he be now--like that?" and he pointed to the
half-eaten carcass.

Rose shuddered. There it was again--the same, familiar, disarming
plausibility of Martin's, the old trick of making her seem to be
the one in the wrong.

"I wish I had an acre for every good thrashing I got when I was a
boy," he commented drily. "But in those days a father who
demanded obedience wasn't considered a monster."

"If you only loved him, I wouldn't care," sobbed Rose. "I could
stand it better to have you hit him in anger, but you're so hard,