"Before that woman? Father, I am a man -I am not afraid. It is my izzat - my honour."
Strickland only laughed (to this day I cannot imagine what possessed him), and gave Adam the little tap-tap with a riding-cane that was whipping sufficient for his years.
When it was all over, Adam said quietly: "I am little, and you are big. If I stayed among my horse folk I should not have been whipped. You are afraid to go there."
The merest chance led me to Strickland's house that afternoon. When I was half-way down the drive Adam passed me, without recognition, at a fast run. I caught one glimpse of his face under his big hat, and it was the face of his father as I had once seen that in the grey of morning when it bent above a leper. I caught the child by the shoulder.
"Let me go!" he screamed, and he and I were the best of friends, as a rule. "Let me go!"
"Where to, Father Adam?" He was quivering like a new-haltered colt.
"To the well. I have been beaten. I have been beaten before women! Let me go!" He tried to bite my hand.
"That is a small matter," I said. "Men are horn to beatings."
"Thou hast never been beaten," he said savagely.
"Indeed I have. Times past counting."