‘And here’s another thing, mind you. It’s brought to me as you and him shook hands and took on to be friends with one another. Is that trew?’ Joe looked guilty, but made no answer. ‘Is it trew?’ Still Joe returned no answer, and his father changing the hand with which he held him, for his own greater convenience, knocked him off his feet, restored him to his balance, knocked him off his feet again, and again settled him. ‘Now,’ said Samson, ‘is it trew?’ The boy tried to recoil from the uplifted threatening hand, and cried out ‘No!’ ‘Now,’ said Samson, rising with a grim satisfaction, ‘that’s a lie. There’s nothin’ i’ the world as I abhor from like a lie I’ll teach thee to tell me lies. Goo into the brewus and tek thy shirt off; March!’ The little girl clung to her mother’s skirts crying and trembling. The mother herself was trembling, and had turned pale. ‘Hush, hush, my pretty,’ she said, caressing the child, and averting her eyes from Joe. ‘March!’ said Samson, and Joe slunk out of the room, hardening his heart as well as might be for endurance. But when he was once out of sight of the huge bullying figure and threatening eye and hand, the sight of his cap lying upon a chair in the hall supplied him with an inspiration. He seized the cap, slipped out at the front door, and ran. The early winter night was falling fast by this time. Half a dozen stars twinkled intermittently in the black-blue waste of sky, and when the lad paused to listen for possible sounds of pursuit the hollow moaning of the wind and the clang of bare wintry poles mingled with the noise of his own suppressed breathing.