e cruelty than that which she had suffered, a
congregation of masked men knocked at the door and ordered the quaking
Jerry to come forth and face civic indignation.

He came because he had no choice, limping piteously on his sprung leg
with his jaw hanging so that the missing teeth were abnormally
conspicuous. Outside his door a single torch flared and back of its
waver stood a semicircle of unrecognized avengers, coated in black
slickers with hats turned low and masks upon their faces. They led him
away into the darkness while more lustily than before, though for an
opposite reason, the woman and the children shrieked and howled.

Jerry trembled, but he bit into his lower lip and let himself be
martyred without much whimpering. They stripped him in a lonely gorge
two miles from his abode and tied him, face inward, to a sapling. They
cow-hided him, then treated him to a light coat of tar and feathers and
sent him home with most moral and solemn admonitions against future
brutalities. There the victims of that harshness for which he had been
"regulated" wept over him and swore that a better husband and father had
never lived.

But Jerry had suffered for an abstract idea rather than a concrete
offence, and both Parish Thornton and Hump Doane recognized this fact
when with sternly set faces they rode over and demanded that he give
them such evidence as would lead to apprehension and conviction of the
mob leaders.

Black shivered afresh. He swore that he had recognized no face and no
voice. They knew he lied yet blamed him little. To have given any
information of real value would have been to serve the public and the
law at too great a cost of danger to himself.

But Parish Thornton rode back, later and alone, and by diplomatic
suasion sought to sift the matter to its solution.

"I didn't dast say nuthin' whilst Hump war hyar," faltered the first
victim of the newly organized "riders," "an' hit's plum heedless ter
tell ye anything now, but yit I did recognize one feller--because his
mask drapped off."

"I hain't seekin' ter fo'ce no co'te evidence outen ye now, Jerry," the
young leader of the Thorntons assured him. "I'm only strivin' ter
fethom this matter so's I'll know whar ter start work myself. Ye needn't
be afeared ter trust me."

"Wa'al, then, I'll tell ye." They were talking in the woods, where
autumnal colour splashed its gorgeousness in a riot that intoxicated the
eye, and no one was near them, but the ma