ed a tear nor uttered a cry. He stood stock still under
the flailing, and the heart went out of Peterson. Had Dick fought or
struggled, it would have been all right and natural; but this was such a
cold-blooded business, and a strange but strongly-felt superiority of
spirit in the boy awed and confused the big man, and the beating was but
gingerly done after all.

'Come, Dickie, dear,' said Mrs. Haddon, in a penitent tone and with much
humility.

She led the boy into his room, and there addressed a diffident and
halting speech to him. There were times when Mrs. Haddon had a sense of
being younger and weaker than her son, and this was one of them. She felt
it her duty to tell Dick of the sinfulness of his conduct, and to try to
justify the punishment, but her words fell ineptly from her lips,--she
knew them to be vain against the power that held Dick silent and
tearless, and yet without a trace of boyish stubbornness. She was not a
very wise little woman, or her son's force of character might have been
turned early to good works and profitable courses.

In truth the thrashing had had an extraordinary effect on Richard Haddon.
For a boy to be kicked, or clouted, or tweaked by strange men is the
fortune of war--it is a mere everyday incident, the natural and accepted
fate of all boys, and is swiftly resented with a jibe or a missile and
forgotten on the spot; but to be taken in cold blood by one strange man,
not a schoolmaster or in any way privileged, and deliberately and
systematically larruped with a belt under the eyes of another, is burning
shame. It tortured all Dick's senses into revolt, and awakened in him a
hatred of what he looked upon as the injustice and cowardliness of the
outrage that was too deep and too bitter for trivial complaints.

Dick's temperament was poignantly romantic, and the natural tendency had
been fed and nourished by indiscriminate reading. The Waddy Public
Library, in point of fact, was largely responsible for many of the minor
worries and big troubles Dick had been instrumental in visiting on the
township. The 'lib'ry' was in the hands of a few men whose literary
tastes were decidedly crude, with a strong leaning towards piracy on the
high seas, brigandage, buccaneering, and sudden death. Dick read all
print that came in his way. Once he started a book he felt in honour
bound to finish it, however difficult the task. To set it aside would be
a confession of mental weakness. For this reas