"I gave her fair warning," said defiant Billiard.
"Hand me your gun!" demanded Tabitha in exasperation, after a hasty examination of the victim had convinced her that Irene was more frightened than hurt.
"Gun! Ha, ha, ain't that rich?" mocked Billiard.
"'Twas a slingshot," volunteered Toady.
"And he shooted a rock," added Janie.
Tabitha held out her hand with an imperious gesture. "Pass it over quietly, or I shall make you."
Billiard calmly pocketed the article in dispute, and seeing that Irene was recovering under the heroic treatment of her amateur nurses, he seated himself in tantalizing silence upon the saw-horse, as if to enjoy the scene he had created. But his enjoyment was short lived. Tabitha, now thoroughly aroused, and forgetful of her dignity, swooped down upon the tormentor, wrested his slingshot from his grasp, and before anyone could divine her intentions, seized a barrel stave from the woodpile and gave the surprised boy a sound drubbing.
In the midst of the thrashing, there came vividly to her mind her childish horror of that day of reckoning with her father, when he had struck her with one of his slippers, and she recalled the fact that it was not the physical hurt, but the humiliation of the blow which had wounded her most deeply. Flinging down the stick, she released the struggling lad as suddenly as she had seized him; and in tones that sounded husky in spite of herself, briefly ordered, "Go to your room!"
Angry, stunned, shamed, Billiard bounced through the kitchen, slammed the door of his room, turned the key in the lock and—stood still in the middle of the floor. Whipped by a girl not four years his senior! Whipped by a girl! It was an unforgivable outrage. He would get even for that. But what was he to do? Would could he do? She had beaten him at every turn, she had set Toady against him, she had made him the laughing stock of his cousins. He—he—he would do something desperate. He would——
As if in answer to his thoughts, he heard a strange voice close beside the open window say, "Yes, he has run away. The inspector completed his job this morning, found Atwater's accounts five hundred dollars short, and he skipped."