By experience she judged he
would make her pay, and pay dear, for the fright the collie had
given him.
Into the barn she ran, shutting fast its side door behind her.
Then, midway across the dusky hay-strewn space, she came to a
gasping stop. Ruloff had risen from a box on the corner, had set
down his lunch pail, moved between her and the door and yanked
off his brass-buckled belt.
The child was trapped. Here there was no earthly chance for
escape. Here, too, thanks to the closed door, Laddie could not
cone to her aid. In palsied dread, she stood shaking and sobbing;
as the man walked silently toward her.
Ruloff's flat face widened in a grin of anticipation. He had a
big score to pay. And he was there to pay it. The fear of the dog
was still upon him; and the shame that this child, the cause of
all his humiliation, should have seen him run yelling up a tree.
It would take a mighty good flogging to square that.
Sonya cried out, in mortal terror, at his first step. Then- -
probably only in her hysterical imagination, though afterward she
vowed it had actually happened--came rescue.
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