“’Cause you wouldn’t give me your permission, and then I’d break the promise. That’s the way it always goes.” “Very well; you may take your choice,--either the promise or the whipping. I can’t argue with you about it.” Joe was excited and angry. He did not take time to think, but answered hotly that his father could whip him if he wished. Mr. Gaston tested the whip, cutting the air with it once or twice. It made a cruel sound. “I want you to remember, after it is over,” he said slowly, “that it was your choice, and not my pleasure. Stand out here, and turn your back to me.” Joe’s chastisement followed. It was a severe one. The pain was greater than Joe had expected. The shock of the first blow was still fresh when the second one came, and this was followed up by half-a-dozen more in rapid succession. “Now,” said the father, when it was over, throwing the whip aside, “you may go back to the cornfield and go to work.” Without a word, and indeed with mind and heart too full for utterance, the boy shouldered his hoe and started back up the hill. Mr. Gaston, taking a path which skirted the field, walked slowly toward home. His mind too was filled with conflicting emotions. He felt that he was striving to do his duty by the boy, to bring him up to honest, sober manhood. Yet for the first time he began to wonder whether the course he was pursuing with him was just the right one to lead to that end. He paused, and looked across the field to where Joe, who had reached his old place, was bending over a long row of corn; and his heart filled with fatherly sympathy for the lad in spite of his waywardness and obstinacy. The father felt that he would like to reason with Joe again more gently, and started to cross the field for that purpose. But fearing that Joe might think that he had repented of his severity, he turned back and made his way, with a heavy heart, toward home. As for Joe, his anger settled before an hour had passed into a feeling of strong and stubborn resentment. That his punishment had been too severe and humiliating he had no doubt. That he had long been treated unfairly by his father and had been governed with undue strictness he fully believed. Slowly, as he pondered over it, there came into his mind a plan to put an end to it all,--a plan which, without further consideration, he resolved to adopt. This, he was determined, should be the last whipping he would receive at his father’s hands. He was interrupted in his brooding and his plans by a young girl, who came down toward him between the rows of springing corn. It was his sister Jennie, who was two years younger than he. She looked up at him, as she advanced, with mingled curiosity and sympathy in her expressive eyes and face. “Joe,” she said, in an awe-stricken voice, “did Father whip you?” “What makes you think he whipped me?” asked Joe. “Because, I--I heard him tell Mother so.” “What did Mother say?”