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"What for?"
"Come here, I say, and place yourself across my knee."
"Not this time, dad."
If Zebedee had drawn a pistol and shot at his father that worthy couldnot have been more astonished. He almost dropped the stick.
"What do you mean?"
"Just what I say. You are never going to beat me again."
"What?"
"Just what I say, dad. I'm going to make a bargain with you. Youswear that you will never hit me again and I'll make you a rich man."
Ezekiel dropped the stick.
He opened his ponderous jaws and looked at his eldest son much as hemight at a wild beast.
"You--what?"
"Just what I say, dad. Little pitchers have big ears. Well, the bigears have heard that you hate Ethan Allen."
"Well?"
"You would get the reward if you could."
"Well?"
"Swear that you will never hit me again----"
"I will not. Come here, you rapscalion, and I'll teach you to make alaughingstock of me."
Zeb saw his father pick up the stick again, and he got into the corner,and picking up a chair, held it so that his father could not strike him.
"See here, father," he said, very quietly, "you are stronger than I am.You have a right to whip me, and I perhaps deserve it; that isn'tsaying much, but it's enough. Now I want to tell you that if youstrike me I'll leave you this very night, and either join the GreenMountain Boys, or I'll get the reward and go to York and never see youagain."
"What has come over you?"
"Nothing, only I see a way to make some money for you, or myself, andI'll give it to you if you swear never to strike me again."
"It's a bargain."
"Honor bright?"
"Yes, honor bright."
"All right, father. Pull down your sleeves and come with me where noone can hear what I have to say."
To the great surprise of the family, no sounds of crying or sobbingcame from the kitchen, and when Zeb's mother--a little, frail woman,who had never had her own way since she had been married to Zeke,opened the door an hour later and peeped in, she screamed out:
"It's all over! I felt he would do it some day."
"Do what, mother?" asked a girl of twelve.
"Your father has killed Zeb. He said he would, and now he has done it,and he has gone to bury him."
Then there was a scene of shrieking and weeping and sobbing.
