Childe
Harold, lifting his head from his cropping of the grass, looked after
the violently jerking figures and snorted slightly, snuffing with
dilated red nostrils. As a war horse scenting blood and battle, he was
excited.
When Mount Dunstan got his captive into the shed the blood which had
surged in Red Godwyn's veins was up and leaping. Anstruthers, his collar
held by a hand with fingers of iron, writhed about and turned a livid,
ghastly face upon his captor.
"You have twice my strength and half my age, you beast and devil!" he
foamed in a half shriek, and poured forth frightful blasphemies.
"That counts between man and man, but not between vermin and
executioner," gave back Mount Dunstan.
The heavy whip, flung upward, whistled down through the air, cutting
through cloth and linen as though it would cut through flesh to bone.
"By God!" shrieked the writhing thing he held, leaping like a man who
has been shot. "Don't do that again! DAMN you!" as the unswerving lash
cut down again--again.
What followed would not be good to describe. Betty through the open door
heard wild and awful things--and more than once a sound as if a dog were
howling.
When the thing was over, one of the two--his clothes cut to ribbons,
his torn white linen exposed, lay, a writhing, huddled worm, hiccoughing
frenzied sobs upon the earth in a corner of the cart-shed.
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