Acting on this generous impulse, Nathan quitted the gate and ran to get the rigor-mortis exhibit. And in the ensuing moments, confronted by the horror of his return, little Bernice-Theresa suffered all the tortures of the damned. A filthy, intimate boy from the disgustingly productive lower classes had gone to bring her a rat! Dead! He would handle it. He might even drop it in the buggy. She must fly while flying was possible. But she could not climb down from the vehicle and fly with legs. That would be common and crude; beside, where in the vicinity would she fly? No, it was far more consistent for the daughter of a Duchess to fly with a horse and buggy. Therefore, ere the unspeakable vulgarian could return, Bernice-Theresa got into action. She shut her parasol and separated the reins. She nearly pulled herself from the slippery seat, straining to raise the mare’s unwilling head from the clover. The animal’s flank was slapped sharply. When Nathan returned to the gate, the road in front of the house was empty. Nathan headed for the lower mowing. He approached old Caleb without introduction. “You gotta walk home, mister!” was his way of announcing the news. “Or else you better chase your buggy. Yer horse has runned off with it hitched behind him!” Old Caleb came up through the Forge yard in four-foot jumps. He stopped for a speechless instant at the gate. “If you’re goin’ right home, you might tell her I didn’t mean to scare her,” explained Nathan. “We caught this rat yesterday and I was going to let her have it——” “You little blatherskite! Scared her, did you? So she took the lines and drove off home!” Caleb shook his knotty fist under John Forge’s nose. “If my girl’s hurt, I’ll sue you for this! I’ll sue you anyhow, for the leather.” Thereupon old Caleb started after the rig in ludicrous hops. Hours later he reached Paris. His paving-block jaw was still adamant but he had discovered no traces of buggy, daughter or wreckage en route. By a miracle Bernice-Theresa had reached home without mishap. The tragedy was this: Finding at length that she had arrived at her destination in safety, all parental solicitude vanished. Caleb Gridley took the progeny of a Duchess across his knee _and spanked her_! As a result of that spanking, his wife made his life so miserable that he sued Johnathan Forge at law. He had to vent his spleen somewhere. And a week later, being served with papers by the sheriff, Johnathan Forge also had to vent his spleen somewhere and went in search of a freckled-faced little boy. Without explanation, simply desiring something weak on which to wreak his temper, stifling his conscience with the argument that the boy’s misbehavior had frightened the Dresden doll and precipitated the whole calamity, “Brother” Forge of the local church belabored a contorting little body with a harness tug until screams and howls brought his mother.