Martha, pausing on her way up, peeped around the edge of the half-closed door, and then stopped short.

Along the wall, ranged up in line, like soldiers facing their captain, or victims of a hold-up their captor, stood the household servants—­portly Shaw the butler, Beatrice the parlor-maid, Eliza the “chef-cook”—­all, down to the gay young sprig, aforesaid, who, as Martha had explained to her family in strong disapproval, “was engaged to do scullerywork, an’ then didn’t even know how to scull.”  Before them, in an attitude of command, not to say menace, stood Radcliffe, brandishing a carving-knife which, in his cruelly mischievous little hand, became a weapon full of dangerous possibilities.

“Don’t dare to budge, any one of you,” he breathed masterfully to his cowed regiment.  “Get back there, you Shaw!  An’, Beetrice, if you don’t mind me, I’ll carve your ear off.  You better be afraid of me, all of you, an’ mind what I say, or I’ll take this dagger, an’ dag the life out of you!  You’re all my servants—­you’re all my slaves!  D’you hear me!”

Evidently they did, and not one of them cared or dared to stir.

For a second Radcliffe faced them in silence, before beginning to march Napoleonically back and forth, his savage young eye alert, his naughty hand brandishing the knife threateningly.  A second, and then, suddenly, without warning, the scene changed, and Radcliffe was a squirming, wriggling little boy, shorn of his power, grasped firmly in a grip from which there was no chance of escape.

“Shame on you!” exclaimed Martha indignantly, addressing the spellbound line, staring at her blankly.  “Shame on you!  To stand there gawkin’, an’ never raisin’ a finger to this poor little fella, an’ him just perishin’ for the touch of a real mother’s hand.  Get out of this—­the whole crowd o’ you,” and before the force of her righteous wrath they fled as chaff before the wind.  Then, quick as the automatic click of a monstrous spring, the hitherto unknown—­the supposed-to-be-impossible—­befell Radcliffe Sherman.  He was treated as if he had been an iron girder on which the massive clutch of a steam-lift had fastened.  He was raised, lowered, laid across what seemed to be two moveless iron trestles, and then the weight as of a mighty, relentless paddle, beat down upon him once, twice, thrice—­and he knew what it was to suffer.

The whole thing was so utterly novel, so absolutely unexpected, that for the first instant he was positively stunned with surprise.  Then the knowledge that he was being spanked, that an unspeakable indignity was happening him, made him clinch his teeth against the sobs that rose in his throat, and he bore his punishment in white-faced, shivering silence.

When it was over, Martha stood him down in front of her, holding him firmly against her knees, and looked him squarely in the eyes.  His colorless, quivering lips gave out no sound.