A bundle of rags was trussed against the post of one of the stalls. Phil lifted the lantern from the ground and held it up.
“Oh!––oh, dear God!” she wailed piteously, running forward with hands outstretched. “Quick, Phil!––loose the ropes. The hound!––oh, the miserable, foul hound!” she continued.
Phil drew a pocket knife and slashed the ropes that held poor, little, half-unconscious Smiler.
They set the boy gently in a corner; and slowly, in response to crooning words and loving hands that stroked 223 his dirty, wet brow, he came to; and what a great smile he had for Eileen as she laid her tear-stained cheek against the cold, twisted face.
Phil turned as Brenchfield was slowly rising on his arm. He went over and picked up the whip.
“What are you going to do?” anxiously cried Eileen.
“Just three!” said Phil, “for the three he gave that poor, helpless little devil. Say ‘No’ and I won’t.”
It was a challenge.
For answer, Eileen hid her face among Smiler’s rags. And three times, with all the force of a young blacksmith’s arm behind it, that whip rose and fell across the shoulders of Vernock’s Mayor, ere it was broken with a snap and tossed by Phil among the straw.
A little later and Smiler was on his feet, little the worse.