"There!--Now!--Take!--Lazy!--_Sneak!_" Sweat dripped from among the
hairs on his face. That white spot came and went in his left eye like an
evil light.

Some one fell to pounding upon the hall door, and some one else upon a
dividing wall. Then, with a crash, a bottle came hurtling through a pane
of the window.

But Big Tom was himself half crazed by now, and seemed not to hear.
"I'll learn y'!" he shouted, and rained blow after blow--till the small
figure, those old undergarments almost in rags as the rope strands cut
into his back, could stand up to no more punishment. Of a sudden, with
an anguished sigh, the boy half pivoted, and a score of red bands
showing angrily upon his bare, thin arms, gave a lurch, bent double, and
went down, his limp body in a half circle, so that his yellow head
touched his knees.

A hoarse shriek of terror and grief from Cis; she tried to rise, and
dragged the table part way across the kitchen, her chair with it,
striving to get to Johnnie. "Oh, you've killed him!" she cried. "You've
killed him!"

Outside in the hall, the stairs creaked to the steps of several. Voices
called. Doors opened and shut. Windows went up and down. From top to
bottom the old building was astir.

Big Tom strode to the door and listened. Gradually, as quiet prevailed
in the Barber flat, the other flats fell into silence, while the
watchers in the hall stole away. Presently the longshoreman gave a
chuckle. Nobody cared to interfere with him. He came sauntering back to
Johnnie.

The boy was lying prone now, his eyes shut, his breast heaving. As Big
Tom stood over him, his whole little ragged figure shivered, and he
sucked in his breath through his clenched teeth.

"Ha-a-a!" laughed Barber. "So y' will stick in y'r nose! Well, I'll
learn y'!" Catching Johnnie up in one big hand, he carried him to the
table and laid him over its edge, arms outstretched, the yellow head
between them, and the thin legs hanging down toward the floor. Then
taking up that length of rope with which he had beaten the boy, he tied
the spent body beside that of the well-nigh fainting girl.

"Now there the two o' y'll stay till mornin'," he announced when he was
done. "Then maybe y' won't be so fresh about runnin' this place."

The sun was now below the tops of the houses to the west, and the
kitchen was beginning to darken. Big Tom got down the lamp, lighted it,
and carried it to the bedroom. "All right, Pa," he said cheerfully, "I'm