"She'll scream! Catch her,
I say, and gag her!"
"Oh, my girl, my little girl! Leave her alone, you demons!" gasped the
helpless doctor. But just as the fingers loosed their brutal grasp
on the father's throat to reach for the frail, delicate flesh of the
daughter's, straight as a carpenter's leaden plumb there crashed on to
the top of the assailant's head a huge, polished brass bowl. The man
fell, limp, senseless as a corpse. His confederate whirled on his heel,
and fired his revolver twice rapidly above his head, just missing Buck.
Connie shrieked, and the next moment the big, unclean fingers had
locked themselves about her throat, and she was forced to her knees,
while a guttural voice said: "Scream, will you! Well, try it! _This_
is what you get!"
For weeks Buck's ears rang with that awful, smothered cry of his young
mistress, of the tortured voice of the doctor, helplessly choking, "Oh,
my girl! My daughter!" But by this time Buck was three steps from the
bottom, and the back of the burglar was toward him as he crouched over
the struggling girl, choking the screams in her delicate throat.
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