the setting sun glancing
through the tree trunks, and yonder in it was the brush pile where, on
that memorable morning, he and Frank had "almost" caught a rabbit.
Beyond were the woods where another afternoon never to be forgotten
Frank had jumped a red fox bent on mischief, who, his father said, would
have got some chickens that very night if Frank hadn't chased him far
into the distant hills.

Then there was the time down in the creek bottoms when he had sat down
on a log, and Frank had rushed toward him, leaped the log, and jerked
the life out of a big copperhead moccasin coiled just behind him in the
grass. And not very long ago, at the country store up the road, when a
big boy had tried to bully him, Frank had come to his side and growled,
and the boy had backed off, his face white. Frank had always stuck to
him.

His face grew solemn, a lump rose in his throat. He could not sit here
any longer with Frank chained up around yonder waiting a beating. He got
up and started once more around the house. He was just in time to see
his father cross the yard and stop in front of a bush.

He stood where he was, watching with alarmed eyes. When his father
turned he had a switch in his hand. At sight of it the blood rushed to
the boy's face, and every nerve tingled. He had doubted it a little bit
up to this time; now there was no doubt left. His father was going to
whip Frank.

Once at Tom Belcher's store he had seen a man whip a dog. The dog had
writhed rather comically on the ground, and his cries had filled the
air. He himself had stood on the store porch and watched the
performance in a detached, judicial frame of mind. It had been a
spectacle, and nothing more; but this was vastly different. That had
been an old hound, and this was Frank.

That was a big switch his father had cut, and his father was very
strong. It would hurt, hurt even through Frank's long hair, hurt
terribly. Frank would writhe on the ground, Frank's cries would fill the
air. He watched his father's face as Earle came toward him. It was
serious and grim, so serious that it almost hurt. Maybe his father
didn't want to whip Frank; maybe he was doing it because he thought, in
his ignorance and simplicity, that he ought to; maybe his father hated
to do it.

He thought of retreating once more to the side porch where he could not
see, of hurrying beyond it to the orchard and there crying, perhaps. But
he could not do that. Breathing fast, he followed