"But how'll he get out?"
"That's for him to say. We'll show him what it is to go agin our crowd, an' the rest is his business."
Then Fred was borne forward again until it seemed as if fully half a mile had been traversed, when the regulators halted for the second time.
The wrappings were removed from his head, and as nearly as the prisoner could tell he was some distance from the breaker; at the mouth of what appeared to be an abandoned shaft.
"Now, look here," Skip Miller said, as he stood before his prisoner. "You've taken it into your head that us reg'lators don't 'mount to nothin'; but by to-morrer mornin' you'll think different. What we say we mean an' don't you forget it. If you'd been man enough to do like every other feller it would 'a been all right; but instead of that you go babyin' to old Donovan, an' we don't 'low sich funny business."
"What are you going to do now?"
"Show what the reg'lators 'mount to. When you come out of this I reckon you'll be willin' to pay up like a man, an' join us."
"It will have to be a pretty stiff dose to make me do anything of the kind," Fred said, angrily.
"That's jest what this is goin' to be. We're lettin' you off of a poundin' so's to show what can be done, an' if you say so much as a word to old Donovan we'll pretty near kill you."
"I shall talk to whoever I please."