Her back ached with weariness. Yet, in the absence of her protectors, she dared not complain or even to allow herself the luxury of walking slowly. So, up the hill, she toiled; at top speed. Ruloff had finished filling another basket, and he prepared to follow her. This completed the morning's work. His lunch-pail awaited him at the barn. With nobody to keep tabs on him, he resolved to steal an extra hour of time, in honor of Labor Day--at his employer's expense. Sonya pattered up the rise and around to the corner of the house. There, feeling her father's eye on her, as he followed; she tried to hasten her staggering steps. As a result, she stumbled against the concrete walk. Her bare feet went from under her. Down she fell, asprawl; the peaches flying in fifty directions. She had cut her knee, painfully, against the concrete edge. This, and the knowledge that Ruloff would most assuredly punish her clumsiness, made her break out in shrill weeping. Among the cascaded peaches she lay, crying her eyes out. Up the hill toward her scrambled Ruloff; basket on shoulder; yelling abuse better fitted for the ears of a balky mule than for those of a hurt child. "Get up!" he bawled. "Get up, you worthless little cow! If you've spoiled any of those peaches or broke my basket, I'll cut the flesh off your bones." Sonya redoubled her wailing. For, she recognized a bumpy substance beneath her as the crushed basket. And these baskets belonged to Ruloff; not to the Place. For the accidental breaking of far less worthwhile things, at home, she and her brothers and sisters had often been thrashed most unmercifully: Her lamentations soared to high heaven. And her father's running feet sounded like the tramp of Doom. There is perhaps no other terror so awful as that of an ill treated child at the approach of punishment. A man or woman, menaced by danger from law or from private foe, can either fight it out or run away from it. But there is no hiding place for a child from a brute parent. The punishment is as inevitable and as fearsome as from the hand of God. No; there is no other terror so awful. And, one likes to think, there is no other punishment in the next world so severe as that meted out to the torturers of little children. For this hope's basis there is the solemn warning voiced by the All-pitying Friend of children;--a threat which, apparently, was unfamiliar to Ruloff. Down upon the weepingly prostrate Sonya bore the man. As he came toward her, he ripped off the leathern belt he wore. And he brandished it by the hole-punch end; the brass buckle singing ominously about his head. Then, out from the house and across the wide veranda flashed a giant tawny shape. With the fierce speed of his youngest days, Lad cleared the porch and reached the crying child. In the same instant he beheld the advancing Ruloff; and the wise old brain read the situation at a glance.