"What are you
doing here? And how the devil did you get in? This place belongs to me!"
"I know." Piet's face was contemptuous. He seemed to speak through closed
lips. "That is why I came. I wanted you."
"What do you want me for?" flashed back Jerry, with clenched hands. "If
you have anything to say, you'd better say it downstairs."
"I have nothing whatever to say." There was a deep sound in Piet's voice
that was something more than a menace. Abruptly he squared his great
shoulders, and brought the weapon he carried into full view.
Jerry's eyes blazed at the action.
"You be damned!" he exclaimed loudly. "I'll fight you with pleasure, but
not before--"
"You will do nothing of the sort!" thundered Piet, striding forward.
"You will take a horse-whipping from me here and now, and in my wife's
presence. You have behaved like a cur, and she shall see you treated as
such."
The words were like the bellow of a goaded bull. Another instant, and he
would have been at hand grips with the boy, but in that instant Nan
sprang. With the strength of desperation, she threw herself against him,
caught wildly at his arms, his shoulders, clinging at last with frenzied
fingers to his breast.
"You shan't do it!" she gasped, struggling with him. "You shan't do it!
If--if you must punish anyone, punish me! Piet, listen to me! Oh listen!
I am to blame for this! You can't--you shan't--hurt him just because he
has stood by me when--when I most wanted a friend.
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