The Mountain Girl by Emma Payne Erskine Chapter 4 Page 11

Thus cowering, he waited, starting at every sound from below as if to run, then sinking back in fear, breathless with the pounding of his heart in his breast. Now the voices came up to him painfully clear. They were talking to little Hoyle angrily. What they were saying he could not make out, but he again cautiously lifted his head and looked below. Suddenly the child drew back and lifted his arm as if to ward off a blow, but the blow came. Frale saw one of the men turn as he mounted his horse to ride away, and cut the boy cruelly across his face and arm with his rawhide whip. The little one’s shriek of fright and pain pierced his big brother to the heart and caused him to forget for the moment his own abject fear.

He made as if he would leap the intervening space to punish the brute, but a cry of anger died in his