The woman being the weaker, he took for
granted that she was entirely in the right. He faltered in his walk,
and, hesitating, stood to look. His path was too far off for him to hear
the words that were poured forth in such torrents of passion. The boy's
strong sentiment prompted him to run and collar the man; his judgment
made him doubt whether it was a good thing to interfere between man and
wife; a certain latent cowardice in his heart made him afraid to venture
nearer. The sum of his emotions caused him to stop, go on a few paces,
and stop to look and listen again, his heart full of concern. In this
way he was drawing further away, when he saw the farmer step nearer his
wife and menace her with the whip; in an instant more he had struck her,
and Caius had run about twenty feet forward to interfere, and halted
again, because he was afraid to approach so angry and powerful a man.
Caius saw the woman clearly now, and how she received this attack. She
stood quite still at her full stature, ceasing to speak or to
gesticulate, folded her arms and looked at her husband. The look in her
hard, dark face, the pose of her gaunt figure, said more clearly than
any passionate words, "Hold, if you value your life! you have gone too
far; you have heaped up punishment enough for yourself already." The
husband understood this language, vaguely, it might be, but still he
understood enough to make him draw back, still growling and menacing
with the whip.
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