CHAPTER IV

AN UNEQUAL STRUGGLE

"But whoso shall offend one of these little ones that believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck and that he were drowned in the depths of the sea."--Matt. xviii, 6

Terror lent wings to Mollie's feet. Instinct guided her over the unknown terrain of the wretched farm-yard. The overwhelming desire to aid Stephen in whatever peril threatened him restrained any thought of self. No sound escaped her lips. Unconsciously she conserved all her energy for the crucial moment that was to come.

Around the corner of the dilapidated barn with no thought of the horse, Walter, placidly munching his feed; past the miserable pig-sty with its great, fierce-looking inmates peering at her through the interstices of its frame work; along the worn path toward the vegetable garden she sped with the fleetness of a tiny, avenging spirit, ready to combat any ogre who might bar her way.

[Illustration: _Scene from Mary Pickford's Photoplay_. _Sparrows_. "GIMME THAT BRAT!"]

Mollie knew what an ogre looked like. She had seen the colored likeness of one in a book of fairy-tales. An ogre lived, so the story said, on human beings. She had been told that fairytales were not true. The scene which confronted her as she came abreast of the vegetable patch convinced her that statement was a mistake. The tales were true. Peter Grimes was an ogre. He lived on little children!

The awful realization made the poor child's blood run cold. Her heart seemed to stop beating. With dilated, terror-filled eyes she gazed, transfixed, upon the hideous spectacle that was never to be obliterated from her mind.

Before a black, loathsome sea of mud stood Peter Grimes. His tall, spare figure appeared to Mollie colossal. His face, what she could see of it, was twisted by a one-sided smile of inexpressible cruelty and satisfaction. Beside him his son, Ambrose, jumped up and down in sheer ecstasy of joy, his attention riveted upon the piteous cries and struggles of an animal that the mud was slowly sucking down to death in its sinister depths.

Suspended above the bog, head downward, was the form of Stephen, his slender, knickerbockered legs held in the vise-like grip of the human monster while the latter's powerful arms swung him like a pendulum to and fro, heedless of the shrieks, now subsiding as the terrified boy lapsed into unconsciousness.

Two birds, chirping furiously, flew up from the garden and across the bog. A sudden shaft of sunlight sent a golden gleam along their course. Subconsciously Mollie watched their flight. They disappeared into the safety of the thicket beyond.

God's sparrows! They were flying away from the hateful place. The ray of light pointed the way. Then God must be near!

The wonderful thought flashed over the little girl and gave her courage. So tense was the moment she was incapable of conscious mental effort. It was as if her body were completely detached and she, herself, a separate entity. But the tension was broken. Her sentient little frame quivered, then sprang with the agility of a young wildcat straight at the ogre's legs.

She kicked, she beat with her tiny fists, she pinched. It was the pinching that brought results.

"You bad man--you wicked--bad--man!" she screamed, emphasizing each word with a blow. "You put Splutters down--Put him down, I say. Don't you dare to hurt Splutters."

The leg of the ogre stamped and kicked but Mollie hung on. The great arms of the ogre ceased their pendulous motion, but Mollie's attack did not cease. The arms tossed their limp, senseless burden upon a mound of dank grass. Mollie relaxed her efforts. The tall, crooked figure of the ogre bent toward her. He seemed to be licking his chops in anticipation. His talon-like fingers made convulsive, clutching motions as if to encircle her throat. His evil, twisted face with its narrow eyes leered down into her face with savage intensity. She met the look fearlessly.

"You'd ought to be ashamed of yourself," she stormed, in a frenzy of indignation. "And there was somebody looking at you all the time. What do you suppose He thought?"

"What's that? Who saw anything?" exclaimed Grimes quickly. He raised his head and looked suspiciously about.

"Never you mind. He's gone now. He'll fix you some day."

Mollie could be a little spitfire when she chose. Her large eyes, blazing now from out her pale, oval face gave her a weird, elfin expression that had its effect upon the uncouth and less intelligent creature she dared to arraign. She was only repeating words she had heard many times in the kitchen of old Lucy, her mother's cook, but for Grimes they now had but one significance. Someone, Bailey, probably, had been spying upon him from the other side of the gate shutting off the farm from the narrow road leading to the main highway. He muttered an oath.

"Aw, I was only a-jokin'," he exclaimed in a loud tone. "I'll larn yo' young-uns that when I say a thing I mean hit an' I doan want none o' yer back clack. Ef I feel fer ter drown a sick shote I'm a-goin' ter do hit an' ther hain't a-goin' ter be no argymint. Anybody thet tries hit'll git a taste o' th' same med'cine."

With a sweeping blow of his huge hand he hurled Mollie to one side and in his habitual writhing, dragging manner, moved ominously off toward the house.

Mollie, too dazed by the suddenness of the blow to cry out, watched him go. The stimulus of excitement was still upon her. On the heap of decaying vegetation near by Stephen stirred slightly. A sound that was half sob, half moan, escaped him. Instantly Mollie was at his side, pulling at his arms, trying with all her puny strength to lift him to a sitting posture, beseeching him to open his eyes.

"Splutters--Splutters, wake up," she implored, an hysterical note beginning to tincture the clear, childish treble of her voice. "It's all right, Stevie. The ogre's gone. He won't hurt you. God got around just in time. He scared him away. Stevie--Stevie, don't you hear me?"

Stephen heard, but the comforting little voice seemed faint and far away. It was musical, though, and pleasant to listen to. Somebody did care for him, after all. He wasn't alone and forgotten, and going to be killed--like a pig. That had all been a terrible dream. The realization brought a sense of comfort. With a long, tremulous sigh the lad opened his eyes, blue as violets, and looked about him.

His range of vision was obscured by Mollie's little face. She was bending solicitously over him. He tried to smile but there was that in Mollie's appearance which stayed him in the effort. She was pale as death. There was a wild, startled look in her eyes. Her lips were quivering.

"Oh, Splutters!" she gasped, and began to sob.

Stephen struggled to regain his senses. He pulled himself up on one elbow and inspected the place where he was lying. Instantly he sprang up in disgust. The action made him acutely conscious of his ankles. They felt stiff, as if tight bands were about them. He looked down. His clean stockings bore traces of muck. Could it be that his dream was true, after all! He turned swiftly.

"Ah-a!"

The ejaculation was involuntary. Stephen almost swooned again as his breath gave out the sound. His whole frame began to tremble as with the palsy. A panic seized him. He would have run but that his legs refused to move. His feet seemed rooted to the ground. In that moment he felt old--ages old, as if he had lived a long time ago and had just returned to the scene where he had suffered torture and death.

Mollie's sobs brought him back to a sense of reality. The nervous reaction after her heroism in confronting the monster whom she still firmly believed subsisted upon little children, and whom she would never cease to designate as "the ogre", was producing a speedy rise in the child's temperature. Her face, pale a moment ago, was now flushed and swollen with tears. She flung her arms about Stephen and implored him to take her home before the ogre killed them. He, no less miserable than herself, strove to quiet her.

"He won't eat you, Mollie," the boy whispered through lips that felt stiff and parched, so difficult was it for him to make an articulate sound. "He's not an ogre. He's just a bad man. Perhaps he's crazy. I felt sorry for the pig. I didn't want him to drown it alive. I made him mad when I teased him to give it to me and let me cure it. I reckon he was just trying to scare me so I would not tease him again."

Nervously the little fellow detached Mollie's clinging hands from his arm and led her, timidly and with the utmost caution, to a pile of thin, narrow oak boards about three feet long, such as are substituted very commonly in the south for shingles. They had been accumulated by Peter with a view to some day improving the roof of the old barn. Behind them the children were not in view of anyone at the house. There they sat down and Stephen wiped away the little girl's tears.

"Can't we go home, Splutters--Can't we go home?" she kept repeating with such heartbreaking monotony that his natural good judgment and sound, though youthful reasoning almost yielded to her entreaties that they run away at once, before any more terrible things befell them.

"He's too big and too strong," said the boy protector, sorrowfully. "That's why I came along with him in the first place. I almost knew it was a mistake, but there wasn't anything I could do. I think, when they find out about the mistake, the lady I lived with will send someone to find me. I hadn't lived with her very long but she liked me and I was going to be her real little boy, if she hadn't been hurt. But she said I could go on to school and the papers could be signed any time. I reckon if they had been signed this mistake wouldn't have happened." He sighed wistfully.

"But if we ran away, and there was anybody coming to fetch you, maybe we'd meet them on the way," argued Mollie, reluctant to abandon the thought of escape.

Stephen's blue eyes thoughtfully contemplated the forbidding landscape about them. He was considering, as well as he could, every detail and every possibility. A sudden twinge in one of his ankles decided him. With it came surging over him a mental repetition of the agony through which he had passed such a short time before. Anything--anything but that, he thought. Aloud he said to Mollie that if they did try to escape and lost their way and walked into such mud as seemed all about the farm they would die just as the little pig died.

Mollie stared at him, aghast. She had not thought of that. She was thinking only of the ogre. She wanted to get away from him.

"I don't guess he'll hurt us," Stephen remarked, after more reflection, "so long as we keep quiet and do what he and she tell us. We'll have to get dirty and spoil our clothes and I don't guess we'll get anything good to eat, but after while somebody is sure to come and take us away. I heard that man in the buggy with you tell him that he was to keep you well, and not let you get sick, because if you died the money would stop coming."

But of himself little Stephen was not so sure.

"I reckon I'll have to work awful hard to please him," he continued, after a moment. "There can't any money come to him for me, because nobody knows I'm here."

It was then Mollie had her inspiration.

"I know what," she exclaimed, with a lightning-like change of mood. "If he's going to get money for me and mustn't hurt me, then he won't dare hurt you very much because he'll be afraid of me, for I'd tell, the first chance I got. And I wouldn't stay here alone without you, and if I went off to find my way home he'd be afraid I'd drown in the mud, and so he'll not kill you because he'll want me to live."

She paused for breath. No lawyer could have reasoned the matter out any better or more accurately. So quickly do common danger and necessity sharpen the wits of children whose intelligence has not already been dulled by brutal treatment. In her enthusiasm Mollie almost forgot her woes. Not so, Stephen.

"We'll have to be careful," he warned. "We mustn't make them mad. I reckon we'd better go into the house. They'll be looking for us."

The dispirited tone of suppressed yearning, and abject resignation to the miserable existence which he sensed was before them, gave to the orphan boy's words a quality and volume of meaning far beyond their linguistic significance.