furlong above, rolled the
homecoming car. At sight of it, Sonya started up. She was not certain
how the car's occupants would take her preempting of the veranda in
their absence. Letting Lad's head gently down to the floor, she slipped
away.

To the barn she went, ignorant that her father had not returned to the
orchard. She wanted to get herself into a more courageous frame of mind
before meeting Ruloff. By experience she judged he would make her pay,
and pay dear, for the fright the collie had given him.

Into the barn she ran, shutting fast its side door behind her. Then,
midway across the dusky hay-strewn space, she came to a gasping stop.
Ruloff had risen from a box on the corner, had set down his lunch pail,
moved between her and the door and yanked off his brass-buckled belt.

The child was trapped. Here there was no earthly chance for escape.
Here, too, thanks to the closed door, Laddie could not come to her aid.
In palsied dread, she stood shaking and sobbing; as the man walked
silently toward her.

Ruloff's flat face widened in a grin of anticipation. He had a big
score to pay. And he was there to pay it. The fear of the dog was still
upon him; and the shame that this child, the cause of all his
humiliation, should have seen him run yelling up a tree. It would take
a mighty good flogging to square that.

Sonya cried out, in mortal terror, at his first step. Then--probably
only in her hysterical imagination, though afterward she vowed it had
actually happened--came rescue.

Distinctly, against her quivering side, she felt the pressure of a warm
furry bulk. Into her paralyzed hand a reassuring cold muzzle was
thrust. And, over her, came a sense of wonderful safety from all harm.
Facing her father with a high-pitched loud laugh of genuine courage,
she shrilled:

"You don't dare touch me! You don't dare lay one finger on me!"

And she meant it. Her look and every inflection of the defiant high
voice proved she meant it; proved it to the dumfounded Ruloff, in a way
that sent funny little shivers down his spine.

The man came to a shambling halt; aghast at the transfigured little
wisp of humanity who confronted him in such gay fearlessness.

"Why don't I dare?" he blustered, lifting the brass-buckled weapon
again.

"You don't dare to!" she laughed, wildly. "You don't dare, because you
know he'll kill you, This time he won't just knock you down. He'll KILL
you! He'll never let you hit me again. I know