"
But when the proud mother faintly and tearfully related the
particulars of the tragedy, and told how Phebe had saved her
father's life and probably her mother's--for, "I was too sick to
climb out of a window," she said; when she told how the child
after a merciless whipping had again cut her father down from the
trammel-hook, had extinguished the fire, and had been nursing her
father back to life, while all the time in almost agony herself
from the cruel blows that had been rained upon her--Phebe was
dazed and bewildered at the storm of applause that greeted her.
And when the surgeon, in order to intensify the general desire for
vengeance, showed the great welts and scars on her arms and neck,
gray-bearded fathers who had known her from infancy took her into
their arms and blessed and kissed her. For once in his life young
Hal June wished he was a gray-beard, but his course was much more
to the mind of Phebe than any number of caresses would have been.
Springing on his great black horse, and with his dark eyes burning
with a fire that only blood could quench, he shouted:
"Come, neighbors, it's time for deeds.
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