“Get in there, you old muskrat! You shall stop your own breaks if it takes your cursed carcass to do it! Now then, have you got your breath?”
Nancy stayed only to hear a voice that was her father's, convulsed with terror and the chill of his repeated duckings, begging to be spared the anguish of drowning by night in three feet of ditch-water.
“Mr. Travis,” she screamed, “you let my father be, whatever you are doing to him! Father, you come right home and get on dry clothes!”
Travis was as much amazed as if Diana with the moon on her forehead had appeared on the ditch-bank to take old Solomon Lark under her maiden protection; but no less he stuck to his prize of war.
“Your father hasn't time to change his clothes just yet, Miss Nancy; he's got some work to do first.”
“Who are you, to be setting my father to work? Let go of him this minute! You are drowning him; you are choking him to death!” sobbed the frantic girl. The shadow fortunately withheld the details of her father's condition, but she had seen enough. Had Travis been drinking? Was the man bereft of his senses?
He was quite himself apparently,—hideously cool, yet roused, and his voice cut like steel.
“You had better go home, Miss Nancy, and light a fire and warm a blanket for your father's bed. He'll be pretty cold before he gets through with this night's work.”
After this cruel speech he took no more notice of Nancy, but leaped upon the ditch-bank and began hurling earth in great shovelfuls, patting the old man on the head with his cold tool whenever he tried to clamber up after him.
“You'd better not try that,” he roared in a terrible voice that wounded Nancy like a blow. “Get in there, now! Puddle, puddle, or I'll have you buried to the ears in five minutes!”