Negro servants who had been working on the lawn following and clutching at her hands.
Colonel Lauriston leaped from his chair and rushed toward the end of the veranda from which the sounds came. Old John Marley waddled puffingly behind, his flabby face agitated to a pale beet red flush. Colonel Lauriston reached the corner of the house almost in collision with the irate woman, who proved to be Mrs. Sally Gorton, a tenant on the estate the ousting of whose family had been one of the errands of Colonel Lauriston during his afternoon ride.
"Ah, you snake!" she screamed." Take that—and that—and that." With each word she applied a rawhide whip to Colonel Lauriston's head, face and shoulders. He sought wildly to seize the lash but she grabbed it from his hands and plied it again and again. Finding himself unable to prevent the blows the Colonel jumped back, at each step of retreat trying to catch the lash so as to wrench the whip from the woman. Her aim in each blow was perfect, however. With blazing eyes and hair streaming she seemed a veritable fury and to have uncanny knowledge of where to ply the lash so as to elude his grasp.
Lida, however, attracted from the house by the screams rushed to the veranda in time to see her father being lashed and jumped between him and the woman in time to receive one stroke across her shoulder. This blow across her tender flesh raised a welt of blue that could be seen quickly, showing its discoloring trace under the thin waist she wore. With no hesitating thought she braved the blow
