would pay ten times the value of the
melons. I want to teach you better than to steal; and when I've done
with you, I don't believe you will want to steal any more of my fruit."

"What are you going to do?" demanded Richard, very much disturbed by
the decided tones of the farmer.

"I'm going to give you a sound thrashing."

"No, you are not," said Richard, who would rather have died on the spot
than submit to the humiliation of a flogging.

"You will see whether I am or not. It's no kind of use for me to take a
rich man's son like you before the court. Your father would pay your
fine, and you would laugh in your sleeve, and call it a good joke."

"You have no right to flog me," protested Richard.

"Perhaps I haven't; but I'm going to do it, if I have to suffer myself
for it. I am going to have the satisfaction of curing you of stealing
my melons."

Bates had taken hold of Sandy again, and Mr. Batterman prepared to make
good his promise. By the light of the lantern Richard saw the hard face
of the farmer. It was stern and forbidding, and he felt that he meant
all he had said. How could the son of the owner of Woodville submit to
the disgrace of being whipped? At home he was treated with respect and
consideration. The servants took off their hats to him. His father, in
his sternest moments, had never hinted such a thing as corporal
punishment.

It seemed absolutely impossible for him to submit to the farmer's
terrible remedy, but there was no way to avoid it. He had offered to
compromise, but nothing would satisfy his relentless captor. The
punishment was to be inflicted in the spirit of revenge rather than
from a sense of duty, which made it all the more intolerable to think
of. He was not to be whipped for his own or the public good, but to
satisfy the malice and revenge of "Old Batterbones."

He decided not to submit to the infliction; but he might as well have
decided not to let the sun rise on the following morning, or to stop
the Hudson in its majestic flow to the sea. His own experience, so
dearly bought in the garden, had shown him that he was utterly
incapable of any successful resistance. He looked around him for the
means of escape, and racked his brain for some expedient that would
enable him to checkmate his unwieldy opponent; but he looked in vain,
and thought in vain. There was nothing upon which to hang even the
faintest hope of resistance or escape.

The farmer held him by the collar, and the