Moreover, the deed had been done with cruelty, and Sabinsport could not stand for that. She might--and did--overlook a great deal of the normal cruelty of daily life--cruelties of neglect and snobbery and bad conditions, but the out-and-out thing she wouldn't stand. A boy caught tying a tin can to a dog's tail in Sabinsport would be threatened by the police, held up to scorn in school and thrashed at home. A man who beat his wife or child went to jail, and one of Sabinsport's reasons for mistrusting the motley group of foreigners in its mines and mills was the stories of their harsh treatment of their women. The steady flow of news of repeated, continued violence in Belgium stirred Sabinsport to deeper and deeper indignation. The Sunday before Patsy's letter arrived a group of leading men and women asked Dick to start a relief fund; the Sunday after, almost everybody doubled his subscription, for the letter clinched their personal judgment of the case. "She's been there; she says it as we thought." There was another element in Belgium's case that took a mighty grip on Sabinsport, particularly the men and boys. It was the little nation's courage. Many a man came to Dick with a subscription because it was so "damned plucky." Belgium's courage had no deeper admirers than Mulligan and Cowder. Jake swore long and loud and gave generously. Cowder said little, but the largest sum the fund received in these first days was slipped into Dick's hand by Reuben Cowder with a simple, "Got guts--that country has." It is not to be supposed that there were no dissenting voices, no doubts, no qualifications in the matter on which the town formed its final judgment on Belgium. There were people who intimated that Germany simply had beaten France and England to it. Sabinsport knit her brow and pondered. Possibly England had arranged with Belgium to let her through in case of attack--possibly France would have broken her word in case of need. However that might be, the fact was that it was Germany that had abused her oath and not France or England, and she did it at the moment when neither of the others was thinking of such a maneuver and was unprepared for it. Belgium might be surrounded by rogue nations, but still there is a choice in rogues. Only one so far had proved itself a rogue. Sabinsport dismissed the doubt from her mind. The facts were against it.