Almost involuntarily she obeyed, and moved forward a step that she
might behold him. A face, deathly pale, she saw, which in the sunshine
glistened with the sweat of agony that bedewed it; but the lips were
tightly closed and the countenance grimly expressionless. Even as she
looked she heard her father command the man to lay on anew. Then, as
before, his eyes met hers; but this time no smile did she see investing
them.

Again the whip cracked and fell. She drew back, but his glance seemed
to haunt her even when she no longer saw his face. A sudden resolution
moved her, and in a frenzy of anger and compassion she flung out of
the room. A moment later she burst like a beautiful virago into the
courtyard.

"Stop!" she commanded shrilly, causing both her father and the
executioner to turn, and the latter pausing in his hideous work. But a
glance from the Marquis bade him resume, and resume he did, as though
there had been no interruption.

"What is this?" demanded Bellecour, half amused, half vexed, whilst a
sudden new light leapt to the eyes of La Boulaye, which but a moment
back had been so full of agony.

But Mademoiselle never paused to answer her father. Seeing the
executioner proceeding, despite her call to cease, she sprang upon him,
caught him by the arms and wrested the whip from hands that dared not
resist her.

"Did I not bid you stop?" she blazed, her face white, her eyes on fire;
and raising the whip she brought it down upon his head and shoulders,
not once but half-a-dozen times in quick succession, until he fled,
howling, to the other side of the horse trough for shelter. "It stings
you, does it" she cried, whilst the Marquis, from angered that at first
he had been, now burst into a laugh at her fury and at this turning of
tables upon the executioner. She made shift to pursue the fellow to his
place of refuge, but coming of a sudden upon the ghastly sight presented
by La Boulaye's lacerated back, she drew back in horror. Then, mastering
herself--for girl though she was, her courage was of a high order--she
turned to her father.

"Give this man to me, Monsieur," she begged.

"To you!" he exclaimed. "What will you do with him?"

"I will see that you are rid of him," she promised. "What more can you
desire? You have tortured him enough."

"Maybe. But am I to blame that he dies so hard?"

She answered him with renewed insistence, and unexpectedly she received
an ally in M. des Cadoux--an elderly g