“Move faster, there, Bert Jackson! What’s the matter with ye, anyway?”
The words were shouted in a brutal voice which Marion knew only too well to belong to Matt Jenkins, the keeper of the Poor Farm.
“I am moving as fast as I can,” answered a boyish voice, “but my arm aches so badly that I can hardly walk, Mr. Jenkins.”
“As if an ache in your arm hindered you from walkin’ fast!” roared Matt Jenkins again. “Faster, I say, or I’ll put the whip on ye!”
There was no reply, only the hurried tramp of bare feet in the road, but there was a light crackle in the bushes of the pasture lot as Marion hurried to the bars driving the truant cow before her.
A group of nearly a dozen lads from the Poor Farm were shuffling down the road. They had been working about on various farms through the day, and now were “rounded up” like so many cattle by Matt Jenkins, their keeper, and were being hurried home under the constant goad of voice and lash, the latter a cart whip of ugly dimensions.
Just as Marion reached the bars the squad of boys came abreast of her, and one—a fine, manly looking chap of seventeen or eighteen—glanced quickly in her direction, almost stopping short as he did so.
“Hi, there! Laggin’ ag’in, air ye, Bert Jackson!” roared the keeper again. “There! Take that fer yer stubbornness in not doin’ as I tell ye!”
The long lash circled through the air and came down with a hiss that made Marion’s blood run cold—but only for a minute.
The next instant she had darted straight out into the road, and as the vicious whip was raised for a second cut at the poor youth she sprang at Matt Jenkins with the fury of a panther—snatching the whip from his hands and throwing it over the fence into the pasture.