It looked as if the lash had cut him in two.
The blow had stung his heart and it had ceased to beat.

But the gamekeeper understood vagrants! the young blackguard was only shamming! "Up wi' ye, ye deevil! or I s' gar ye," he said from between his teeth, lifting the whip for a second blow.
Just as the stroke fell, marking him from the nape all down the spine, so that he now bore upon his back in red the sign the ass carries in black, a piercing shriek assailed Angus's ears, and his arm, which had mechanically raised itself for a third blow, hung arrested.
The same moment, in at the coach-house door shot Ginevra, as white as Gibbie.

She darted to where he lay, and there stood over him, arms rigid and hands clenched hard, shivering as he had shivered, and sending from her body shriek after shriek, as if her very soul were the breath of which her cries were fashioned.

It was as if the woman's heart in her felt its roots torn from their home in the bosom of God, and quivering in agony, and confronted by the stare of an eternal impossibility, shrieked against Satan.
"Gang awa, missie," cried Angus, who had respect to this child, though he had not yet learned to respect childhood; "he's a coorse cratur, an' maun hae's whups." But Ginevra was deaf to his evil charming.

She stopped her cries, however, to help Gibbie up, and took one of his hands to raise him.
But his arm hung limp and motionless; she let it go; it dropped like a stick, and again she began to shriek.