“What!” he thundered. “You dare to lie to me about it! You dare to steal from me, and then lie to my face! You insufferable beggar! I'll teach you a lesson.” And, putting out his hand, he took his rattan cane from the peg it hung by on the wall.
“Oh! really and truly, Uncle Peter,” I protested, “I never stole a thing in all my life. I never saw your cigars. I didn't even know you had any. Oh! you—you're not going to whip me, when I didn't do it?”
“Why, what a barefaced little liar it is! Egad! you do it beautifully. I wouldn't have given you credit for so much cleverness.” He said this in a sarcastic voice, and with a mocking smile. Then he frowned, and his voice changed. “Come here,” he snarled, his fingers tightening upon the handle of his cane.
A great wave of anger swept over me, and brought me a momentary flush of courage. “No, sir; I won't,” I answered, my whole body in a tremor.
Uncle Peter started. I had never before dared to defy him. He did not know what to make of my doing so now. He turned pale. He bit his lip. His eyes burned with a peculiarly ugly light. So he stood, glaring at me, for a moment. Then, “You—won't,” he repeated, very low, and pausing between the words. “Why, what kind of talk is this I hear? Well, well, my fine fellow, you amuse me.”
I was standing between him and the door. I turned now, with the idea of escaping from the room. But he was too quick for me. I had only just got my hand upon the latch, when he sprang forward, seized me by the collar of my jacket, and, with one strong pull, landed me again in the middle of the floor.
“There!” he cried. “Now we'll have it out. I owe you four: one for stealing my cigars; one for lying to me about it; one for telling me you wouldn't; and one for trying to sneak out of the room. Take this, and this, and this.”
With that he set his rattan cane in motion; nor did he bring it to a stand-still until I felt as though I had not one well spot left upon my skin.
“Now, then, be off with you,” he growled; and I found myself in the hall outside his door.
I dragged my aching body to my room, and sat down at my window in the dark. Never before had I experienced such a furious sense of outrage. Many and many a time I had been whipped, as I thought, unjustly; but this time he had added insult to injury; he had accused me of stealing and of lying; and, deaf to my assertion of my innocence, he had punished me accordingly. I seriously believe that I did not mind the whipping in itself half so much as I minded the shameful accusations that he had brought against me. “How long, how long,” I groaned, “has this got to last? Shall I never be able to get away—to get to France, to my Uncle Florimond? If I only had some money—if I had a hundred dollars—then all my troubles would be over and done with. Surely, a hundred dollars would be enough to take me to the very door of his house in Paris.” But how—how to obtain such an enormous sum? And it was at this point that my conversation with Mr. Solomon D. Marx came back to me:—