"
"Father," said Dan, with his milder nature trembling at the stern
resolution in his father's eyes, as the hearth-fire flashing up showed
their stronger flash, "you will never do such a thing, at my age and
size?"
"Won't I?" answered Zebedee, cracking in the air the three knotted
tails of the stout hempen twist. "As for your age, why, it ought to know
better; and as for your size, why, the more room for this!"
It never came into Daniel's head that he should either resist or run
away. But into his heart came the deadly sense of disgrace at being
flogged, even by his own father, at full age to have a wife and even
children of his own.
"Father," he said, as he pulled off his coat and red striped shirt, and
showed his broad white back, "if you do this thing, you will never set
eyes on my face again--so help me God!"
"Don't care if I don't," the captain shouted. "You was never son of
mine, to be a runagate, and traitor. How old be you, Master Free and
Frisky, to larn me how the world goes on?"
"As if you didn't know, father! The fifteenth of last March I was twenty
years of age."
"Then one for each year of your life, my lad, and another to make a
man of thee. This little tickler hath three tails; seven threes is
twenty-one--comes just right."
When his father had done with him, Dan went softly up the dark staircase
of old ship timber, and entering his own little room, struck a light.
He saw that his bed was turned down for him, by the loving hand of his
mother, and that his favourite brother Solomon, the youngest of the
Tugwell race, was sleeping sweetly in the opposite cot.
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