"Would ye have liked to have had Lem take her, Pappy Lon?"
"I'd a killed him," muttered Lon, as if to himself. "But ye, Flea," here he rose and brought down his fist with a bang, "ye go where I send ye! The woman's dead. If she wasn't, ye wouldn't have to go to Lem."
To soften him, Fledra knelt down at his feet.
"Pappy Lon," she pleaded, "you haven't got her, anyhow, and you haven't got anybody but me. If you let me stay—"
How he hated her! How he would have liked to bruise the sweet, upturned face, marking the white cheeks with the impressions of his fists! But he dared not. She would run away again—and to Lem he had given the opportunity to drag her to fathomless depths.
Fledra misread his thoughts, and said quickly:
"I wouldn't care if you beat me every day, Pappy Lon—only let me stay. I'll work for my board. And won't you tell me about the other woman—I don't mean my mother."
Then a diabolical thought flashed into the man's mind. He, too, could make her suffer, even before she went to Lem. A smile twisted his lips, and he said slowly:
"Yer mother ain't dead, Flea."
"Not dead!"