oughtn't to
be fathers. Guess that's why I'm an old bach," laughing a little.

The children, swarming back with taunting cries, broke in upon his
meditations, and dragged him into one more race. He was bounding nimbly
after them, the young pack in full cry, when he saw something that froze
his blood, and stopped him as suddenly as if by a wall of rock. It was
Lucy, wild-eyed and white-faced, dashing out of the house-door, while
close at her heels raced her father, a stick of stove wood raised in
air, as if to strike. Liquor and passion had made him an utter maniac
for the minute. Clasped close in the poor girl's arms was the little
baby, its head pressed so tightly against her breast that it could not
cry out. Lucy, flying for life, was evidently too spent and breathless
to make a sound, either.

With a hoarse cry of horror, Nate took a great leap forward and flung
himself, with the fury of a mad bull, between the girl and her natural
protector, meeting Hapgood's onslaught with head down and hands
extended. The latter, blind with his insensate fury, plunged ahead,
unable to stop himself if he would. It looked as if Nate's skull would
be laid open with the billet of wood.

But just as Hapgood would have felled the obstruction, neither knowing
nor caring what it might be, he stubbed his toe and went down like a
log, the stick flying out of his hand, and hitting the ground harmlessly
just beyond. In an instant Nate had grasped it, and stood over the
prostrate inebriate in his turn. It is well said, "Beware the fury of a
patient man." Slow Nate Tierney was white to his lips, now, beneath the
bronze of years, and the knotted veins of his temples throbbed
perceptibly. For perhaps the first time in his life he was thoroughly
angry.

"Lie there, you brute! You scum!" he cried in a deep harsh voice,
unrecognizable as his own. "You'll chase your own children, will you?
You'll hit your little Lucy with sticks like this, will you? And she
savin' the poor baby in her arms. Dog! I've a mind to brain you where
you lie."

The scared children, looking on, wondered if this could indeed be Nate.
The drunken man on the ground, winking and blinking through bleared
eyes, tried to remember if he had ever seen that marble-faced avenger
before. Lucy, peering fearfully through the front window behind locked
doors, hardly knew which to dread the more, her passionate unreasoning
father, or this new and strange edition of her good-natured old