a!
ha! ha!" Then suddenly his look hardened. With a grunt of rage, rope in
hand, he swooped down upon her.

"You brute! You brute!"

It was not till then that Johnnie understood what Big Tom meant to do.
Crying out to him, "Oh, y' mustn't! Y' mustn't!" he rushed across to
catch at the rope, and clung to it with all his might.

Barber caught him up, and once more he threw him--so that Johnnie struck
a wall, and lay for a moment, half stunned. Meanwhile, with his other
hand, the longshoreman thrust Cis down into her chair. Then growling as
he worked, he wound her in the rope as in the coils of a serpent, and
bound her, body, ankles, and arms, to the kitchen table.

Johnnie came crawling back, bruised, but scarcely knowing it; thinking
only of Cis, of saving her from pain and indignity. "No, Mister Barber!"
he pleaded. "Not Cis, Mister Barber! Please! It's all my fault! I
fetched Mister Perkins here! I did! So blame me!"

Barber straightened. He was breathing hard, but there was a satisfied
shine in his bloodshot eyes. "All right, Mister Johnnie," he answered.
His voice was almost playful, but still he did not look at the boy.
"It's y'r fault, is it? Well, I guess maybe it jus' about is! So y'
needn't t' worry! I'll attend t' y'--_no mistake_!"

CHAPTER XXX

DISASTER

BARBER took his time. He even prepared to have a smoke before
"attending" to Johnnie. He fumbled through his coat pockets to find his
pipe, grinning all the while at Cis.

Being bound had not subdued her. She looked back at him, her face
quivering, her cheeks streaming with angry tears. "Oh, yes, he'll go
after you!" she sobbed. "You needn't be afraid he won't! He likes to
take somebody that's little and weak, and abuse him, just as he's abused
me, because I'm a girl! You don't think, Johnnie, that he'd ever take
anybody his own size!"

"That'll do!" warned Big Tom. He had found the pipe, and now came a step
nearer to her. "Y'd better keep y'r mouth shut, young lady!"

"Don't talk, Cis! Don't!" begged Johnnie, half whispering.

"I _will_ talk!" she declared. "All the years I've been here I've wanted
to tell him what I think of him. And now I'm going to!--I _am_ a young
lady. You great, big coward!"

He struck her with the flat of one heavy hand. But as she instantly
struggled, and frantically, throwing herself this way and that, and
almost overturning the table upon herself, the longshoreman thought
better of continuing the punishment