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"Say, men," he wavered in a strained voice, "what air ye goin' to do to me?"

His captors walked on in silence and Abner moved his tongue about his slimy mouth. The masks by his side were inhuman, horrible. He said again, huskily, "I—I wush you'd tell me, s-so I-I'd know what to expeck . . ."

At the tree the masks tied the ends of the rope around the bole with the teamster's back to the light. Then Abner, peering over his shoulder, saw a number of masks, looking black against the headlights, come forward with rope ends, leather straps, and heavy hickory limbs which they had cut in the bushes while they waited.

When Abner saw them coming with these weapons he knew that in a few moments he would be unable to stand, so he knelt beside the bole with his arms held up at a painful angle by the rope. With hill doggedness he determined in his heart that he would not yell. They would probably beat him to death, but he would die silently as his forbears had died silently, a century before, under the tortures of the Indians.

And he did endure it in a sort of rending silence. The teamster received an agonized impression of fire, of tearing flesh, of knife stabs, and of blinding light and a struck gong when a stray stick hit eye or ear. He writhed uncontrollably, swinging by his hands, turning up his belly, his sides, then his back again to the bastinado. He floundered doubled up his legs, kicked, but he did not groan. There was no sound at all save the swish of straps and sticks and leather and the clatter of impacts on his tortured flesh. At last Abner hung limp and motionless and silent beneath their blows.

The teamster did not know when the mob quit or whether they had quit. He was still wrapped in fire, but his hands were free and now filled with lancinating pains. Somebody was kicking him and telling him to stand up; others were saying, "Oh, let him lay," in the disgusted tones of men who have taken some vile satisfaction and who then hold the instrument of their pleasure in disgust.