Mrs. Miner came flying out. She could not recognize her husband in the bleeding, dirty, abject thing squirming under the young man's knee.
"Why, Mr. Morris, who—why—why, it's Tom!" she gasped, her eyes distended with surprise and horror.
Morris looked up at her coolly. "Yes, it's Tom." He then gave his attention to the writhing figure under him. "Crawl, you infernal whelp! Lick the dust, confound you! Quick!" he commanded, growing each moment more savage.
Mrs. Miner clung to his arm. "Please don't," she pleaded. "You're killing him."
Morris did not look up. "Oh, no, I ain't. I'm giving him a little taste of his own medicine." He flopped Miner over on his face and dragged him around in the dust like an old sack. "Beg her pardon, or I'll thrash the ground with yeh!"
"Please don't," pleaded the wife, using her whole strength to stop him in his circuit with the almost insensible Miner.
"Beg!" he said again, "beg, or I'll cave your backbone in." There was a terrible upward inflection in his voice now, a half-jocular tone that was more terrible than the muffled snarl in which he had previously been speaking.
"I beg! I beg!" cried Miner.
Morris released him, and he crawled to a sitting posture. Mrs. Miner fell on her knees by his side, and began wiping the blood from his face. She was breathless with sobbing and the children were screaming. The tears streamed down her face, which was white and drawn into ghastly wrinkles.
"You've killed him!" she gasped.