You bring the brand and look alive, Dick, or I'll sharpen ye up a bit.' The brand was in the corner, but mother got between me and it, and stretched out her hand to father as if to stop me and him.
'In God's name,' she cried out, 'aren't ye satisfied with losing your own soul and bringing disgrace upon your family, but ye must be the ruin of your innocent children?
Don't touch the brand, Dick!' But father wasn't a man to be crossed, and what made it worse he had a couple of glasses of bad grog in him.

There was an old villain of a shanty-keeper that lived on a back creek.

He'd been there as he came by and had a glass or two.

He had a regular savage temper, father had, though he was quiet enough and not bad to us when he was right.

But the grog always spoiled him.
He gave poor mother a shove which sent her reeling against the wall, where she fell down and hit her head against the stool, and lay there.
Aileen, sitting down in the corner, turned white, and began to cry, while father catches me a box on the ear which sends me kicking, picks up the brand out of the corner, and walks out, with me after him.
I think if I'd been another year or so older I'd have struck back--I felt that savage about poor mother that I could have gone at him myself--but we had been too long used to do everything he told us; and somehow, even if a chap's father's a bad one, he don't seem like other men to him.