Mollie set her teeth and clinched her little hands till the nails cut into the flesh. As she did so she took a slow, steady look up at the sky and all about her. It was to make anyone who might be observing her think that she was not afraid and did not suspect the presence of anyone. Then she stooped, picked up the refractory tin can she had previously tried to cast into the bog and made another attempt. This time the can went far enough and, without waiting to see it disappear, she turned about and retraced her steps, back to the truck patch. The children were still there. They were quiet because they were tired and, so Cynthy told Mollie in a whisper, because "old Pete" was around somewhere. Mollie knew then that her consciousness of somebody watching her was not just imagination. The ogre had actually been peering at her from between the bushes! She had just resumed her work when Peter Grimes entered the truck patch. He walked to where she was at work and leered down upon her. "This all yo' got done?" he asked. Mollie stood erect and faced him. "No, sir." "What else yo' ben a-doin'?" "Reddin' up." Mollie was unconsciously adapting herself to the language she heard about her. "Reddin' up what? Whyn't yo' do es yer told?" "Them cans we burned bugs in were all gaumed up. I got clean ones and threw 'em in the bog." "I seed yo'. Thought yo' war a-loafin'. Doan let me ketch ary one o' yo' a-tryin' hit," he continued, glaring about at the frightened little toilers. "An' hyar's sumpin' more yo' mought es well git inter yer haids, ef I ketch ary one o' yo' a-lyin' ter me when I ax yo' sumpin' I'll skin yo' alive an' fling yo' ter th' hawgs." His small eyes focused like gimlets upon Mollie. The little girl met the piercing look as frankly, fearlessly as before. Splutters, walking wearily past them, displayed a remarkably clean tin can. (After hearing Mollie's first statement he had quickly and unobtrusively cleaned the receptacle with grass, sand and a fragment of cloth torn from his now tattered shirt.) Grimes eyed the can, the boy and the girl. The can looked about as clean as anything on the premises. The boy, moving steadily and silently along the potato vines, appeared wholly intent upon his occupation. The girl was looking up into Peter's face out of her large, clear eyes that seemed to the twisted, abnormal man almost to smile upon him. He turned and, without another word, dragged his unwilling, halting leg down the length of the potato hills and away towards the house. From that day Mollie's intellectual supremacy became an accepted though unacknowledged fact. The children yielded to her leadership and learned to depend upon her. Grimes, without knowing it, actually feared her. CHAPTER IX A REIGN OF TERROR "And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage ... and in all manner of service in the field."--Ex. i, 14