“I cannot pound the scoundrel now that I’ve got him down,” said he, turning his face toward Will. “What shall we do with him? You can’t lather a chap that doesn’t resist and that has his head down in the mud. It’s brutal!”
“We’ll tie his hands to the reel and give him a taste of this rope’s end,” suggested Will, judiciously.
“I don’t exactly like that either,” said Reube, rubbing his captive’s head again in the slime. “It’s too much like playing hangman. He deserves the cat-o’-nine-tails if ever a scoundrel did, but I don’t like the dirty work of applying it. We’d better just take him to jail. Then he’ll get a term in the penitentiary, and be out of the way for a few years. Fetch me that cod line out of the cuddy, will you?”
By this time Mart Gandy had found his voice. That word “penitentiary” had reduced him to an abject state of terror, and he began to plead piteously for mercy.
“Lick me! Lick me all you like!” he cried, in his queer, high voice. “I kin take a hidin’; but don’t send me to the penitentiary! What’d the old man do, as hain’t got his right senses no more? An’ the old woman’d jest plumb starve, for the gals they ain’t a mite o’ good to work. Le’ me off this time, Reube Dare, ’n’ I declare I won’t never do it ag’in!”
Mart’s imploring voice more than his words made Reube weaken in his purpose. As for Mart’s promise, he put no faith in that, and marked on Will’s face an unrelenting grin. Nevertheless he said:
“There’s something in what the rascal says, Will. If Mart goes to the penitentiary his family’s going to suffer more than he. I’ve a mind to let him off this time, after all.”
“Well,” grunted Will, “just as you say. But it would be nothing short of iniquitous to let him off altogether. You’d better give him a good ducking, to let him know you’re in earnest, anyway.”
Reube pondered this a moment.
“Mart Gandy,” he said, sternly, “I’m going to let you off this time with nothing more than a ducking, to fix the circumstance in your mind. But remember, if I find you again at any of your old pranks I’ll have a warrant out against you that very day! And I’ve got all the evidence needed to convict you. Now get up!” And he jerked the lanky and bedraggled form to its feet.