"Pour the medicine--quick!"
It is ready.
"Now, Davy, you must take this, or I don't know but papa will--I don't know but papa will kill you."
Up and down the little form is hurled. Stubbornly the little will contends for its own liberty. Rougher and rougher become the motions, darker and darker becomes the man's face--Satanic now--a murderer, bent on having his own will.
"Oh, David, David!"
"Keep still, Esther! I'll tolerate nothing from you!"
Has there been a surrender of the gasping child? The man is too murderous to hear it.
"I'll take it, papa! I'll take it, papa!"
It is a poor, wheezing little cry, barely distinguishable. How long it has been coming to the understanding of those terrible captors cannot be known. How eagerly does the shapely little hand clutch the spoon. "Another," he nods. It is swallowed. The golden head is hidden in the couch.
And David Lockwin sits trembling on the bed, gazing in hatred on the medicine that has entered between him and his foundling.