Mister Henry & Zelamir

The Village

Book One
Daniel

The Vale of Dingle lies almost hidden in the North Downs in Kent. It is part of England where time has stood till where among the ancient churches, stately manor house, thatched cottages, flower covered meadows and glistening brooks the inhabitants enjoy a rural idyll unchanged from the early 1950s. It is an ordered society where crime and anti social behaviour is unknown.

Nine year old Daniel comes to the village with his mother to visit his Uncle Jack. At first the place appears to be a typical English small town but Daniel quickly discovers that it has a certain unusual custom: they had Charity Boys. These are boys whose parents have decided they should be brought up to a very strict set of rules, and who spend their boyhood working for the good of their parents and of their community. They are taught from an early age to be completely obedient, and to accept that they have no rights at all, and must do exactly what they are told to do by their parents and by all grown ups and privileged children.

It takes Daniel a little longer to find out the painful truth about himself.

Chapter 1

Nine year old Daniel and his Mother were visiting the village, he for the first time, to meet his uncle. They had arrived half an hour earlier by train, and had walked down the main street of the picturesque little village from the station. They had an hour or so to kill before Uncle Jack would arrive to collect them, and drive them to his house outside the village.

As a sudden burst of rain came down, they turned a corner on the main street, and spotted a pleasant looking cafe.

"Let's go in and have a nice warm cup of tea," said Daniel's Mum.

"Or a Burger and chips," grinned her son, hungry after the journey. He was well wrapped up for the weather, in his school uniform of grey jumper over his shirt, and neat corduroy school shorts, knee socks and black shoes, with a warm scarf wrapped around his neck, and a grey cap with a red stripe.

He was the picture of a happy prep school boy.

Once inside the cafe, they got a table at the window, and ordered tea and toast for Mum, and burger, chips and coke for Daniel. As they waited, looking out at the passing parade, Daniel suddenly exclaimed: "Look Mum, there's a boy coming along in his bare feet, and he's only wearing a pair of shorts, much much shorter than mine."

Sure enough, when his mother looked out, she saw the boy approaching. He wore only the briefest pair of thin white shorts, which covered his private parts, but left his long brown legs bare from the top of his thighs down. He looked to be about ten or eleven, and was well tanned, and even though he was quite thin, he looked the picture of health. He was carrying a very large bundle of newspapers on his shoulder, and looked to be struggling to carry the heavy weight. Behind him walked a stout balding man, wearing a thick polo neck sweater. As the boy stumbled as he walked, the man drew back a hefty looking strap he had looped around his wrist, and lashed it across the bare back of the struggling child, who jerked, and immediately righted himself from his stumble.

The man raised the strap again, and brought it down with all his strength on the back of the boy's thighs. From inside the window, Daniel could not hear any sound, but he could see from the shape of the almost naked boy's mouth that he was crying.

"Oh that will be just a Charity Boy," said his mother. "This is one of the villages where they have boys like that. You'll probably see a lot more of them before we leave tomorrow."

"What are Charity Boys?" asked Daniel.

"They are boys whose parents have decided should be brought up to a very strict set of rules, and who spend their boyhood working for the good of their parents and of their community. They are taught from an early age to be completely obedient, and to accept that they have no rights at all, and must do exactly what they are told to do by their parents and by all grown ups and privileged children."

"Why has he only got a pair of shorts in this weather?"

"He may be lucky to even have those. Charity Boys are not entitled to anything at all, and many parents prefer to keep their children naked all the time. You will probably see quite a few bare arsed boys around when we go the Uncle Jack's. Charity Boys do not show any gratitude when their parents are kind enough to let them have even a pair of shorts, and therefore most of them don't deserve them. If I had a Charity Boy, I would be very slow indeed to let him wear anything."

"Will he not be freezing Mum?" asked the curious Daniel.

"He may well be, but he's got to put up with it. These brats are toughened up anyway from the time they are very young. Anyway it doesn't matter if he is, because Charity Boys are supposed to suffer."

The boy and the man had now stopped outside the window of the cafe. Briefly, the boy looked in at the big plate of chips and the burger that Daniel was devouring. His big blue eyes were filled with tears from the pain of the strap, and his long blonde hair blew wildly in the strong wind.

There was a paper stand outside the cafe, one of the metal cabinet types, which was cemented into the concrete path. The boy lowered his heavy load of papers onto the stand, and quickly untied the strings which had held them together.

"That will be his Father with him," said Daniel's Mum.

Just then the waitress came over. She overheard the remark. "Yes, that's his Dad. He brings him down every day to set him up for the evening, so that he's there to sell papers to all the commuters coming off the trains."

"How long does he stay," asked Daniel.

"Oh, until about nine o'clock," said the waitress, "Unless there's a later train. He stays until all the trains are in. On Saturday nights he's there until midnight."

The astonished Daniel couldn't take his eyes off the boy. As he watched, the boys father put his hand inside the metal paper pulled out a short but quite thick chain which was attached to the cabinet. He wrapped the chain around the upper thigh of the boy, and snapped it closed with a padlock. The chain only allowed the boy about two feet of freedom from the cabinet, and dug into his flesh just below his crutch.

"That's to make sure he doesn't get lazy when his father isn't looking, and sits down on the job," said Daniel's Mum, "Charity Boys are notoriously lazy, and have to be kept on their toes all the time or they get slack."

"The chain must be sore on his leg," said Daniel.

"Of course it is, that's the idea. It keeps him standing up, and reminds him what he'll get if he doesn't sell his papers," chimed in the waitress.

As they watched, the boys father got hold of the brief shorts, and pulled them right up into the boys crack. He pulled them up at the front, his penis and balls were exposed. He then turned the boy around and bent him over the metal cabinet. When he bent over, Daniel could see that the bare part of his backside was covered in the clear marks which only a severe caning leaves. His thighs and calves were also well striped. His father then began to beat the boy ferociously with the strap. The boy jerked and jumped, but, restrained as he was by the chain, his area of movement was limited.

"His Dad beats him like that every day before he leaves him to get on with his paper selling. It does him the world of good. Really it's amazing how thoughtful his father is," said the waitress. "Then, when he comes back to collect him, he often gives him another beating, sometimes with a cane. He really takes a lot of trouble to make sure his brat learns to behave."

"He is a fine father all right," said Daniel's Mum.

"What's that on the back of his knee?" asked the now thoroughly excited Daniel, pointing.

Sure enough, on the back of the paper boy's knee, there was clearly visible a tattoo of a hugely rampant penis. As the boy jerked around under the strap, the penis moved up and down and changed as he bent and unbent his leg.

"That's a special sign," said the waitress, looking at Daniel's mother, and wondering whether she should say any more.

"Oh yes," said his Mum, "I know about that. We might as well tell Daniel, because he may well see what it means in action when we go to Uncle Jack's house. I think Uncle Jack has a couple of boys working on his land for him who have that mark. Daniel, it means that a boy with that tattoo has been made available by his parents to give pleasure to any adult in any way that the adult may want. It means that he is like a bitch in heat, or a she-cat, who can be fucked by any tom cat who feels the urge, so that boy can be fucked by any man who wants to fuck him, as often as he wants." "Oh," gasped Daniel. He had only recently learned the facts of life, and was still surprised by the novelty of the new things he learned every day.

"Would I be allowed to fuck him Mummy?" he asked in his eager small boy voice.

"I don't think you would be able just yet son," she said kindly, "but if Uncle Jack says you can try, well we'll see if you can practice on one of his boys."

Finished the beating, the brat's father grabbed him by the long blonde hair, and stood him up straight. He once more pulled the shorts up as high as possible, making sure they were well buried into his crack at the rear, and that his prick and balls remained exposed at the front. He then hit the boy across the face with his open hand, gave his hair a final pull, and walked off. It was just three thirty, and the boy would be there for about five hours.

"He looks a bit hungry, Mum," said Daniel, "I'm not going to finish these chips, can I give them to him?"

"No you certainly can not," snapped his Mother. "Charity boys don't need a lot of feeding. If they get too much food they get lazy. They have to be kept hungry to make sure they work."

"That's right," said the waitress, who had come back to the table with fresh tea for Daniel's Mum. "He has told me that he is only allowed to eat once a day, when he has finished all his work. He has a bowl of scraps when he gets home and a mug of milk. If he was to eat anything else, or at any other time, he would deservedly get flogged to within an inch of his life. His mother collects a bucket of slops from us here at the restaurant, and this does him for the week. In return for this he spends Sunday afternoons from 2 until 7 cleaning the cafe toilets and kitchens. His Mother doles out as much from the bucket as she thinks he deserves. Sometimes the bucket lasts two weeks. He gets no food at all on a Sunday, to ensure that he appreciates what he gets for the rest of the week."

Outside the rain was now lashing down. The boy desperately tried to keep his papers dry with the plastic sheet he had for the purpose, but with the squally wind this was difficult. No one would buy wet papers, and, if he didn't sell all the papers he knew he would be letting his father down, and would deserve to be severely whipped. He really regretted what a bad child he was, and was continually grateful for the fact that he had parents who took so much time and trouble to beat him every day to make sure he might some day be good. He knew that, even thought the strappings and the canings were agonising, that they were totally for his own good, and he was only sorry that he caused so much trouble to his devoted parents. He was so lucky also to be allowed to wear his shorts sometimes. He knew he shouldn't be wearing them now in the rain, but, with the chain he could not get them off without tearing them, and his mother had told him they were the only clothes he would be allowed for at least two years. Many of his co-charity boys were kept naked all the time, and never wore anything even to Sunday School.

"Can I go out and look at him, it's stopped raining now," said Daniel.

"Just for a minute son, but come straight back in if it is too cold for you."

Picking up the remaining half of his big hamburger, Daniel wrapped his scarf around him, and pulled up his socks which had slipped down to his ankles. He went outside, and went up close to the nearly naked boy.

"Nice burgers these," he said, "Pity you can't have any."

He stuffed the rest of the burger into his mouth, and chewed it in front of the starving paper brat. Then he ran his fingers along the livid weal's on the back and front of the boys thighs.

"I bet those hurt," he said.

The boy winced as Daniel stuck his nails into a particularly raw stripe.

"Why does your dad have to beat you so much?"

"Because I am lazy and don't work as hard as I should," stammered the boy, not sure whether he should reply to a boy of such obvious superiority. "I need to be thrashed to make sure I remember my position, and to keep working."

Just then a car drew up, the door opened, and out got Uncle Jack. Simultaneously Daniel's Mum came out of the restaurant.

"Hello there you two," said jolly Uncle Jack. "Come on get in, it's just about to lash again."

He gave Daniel a hug, and his Mum a peck on the cheek.

"Welcome to our village. What are you doing Daniel, talking to this shit-boy. Give me a paper brat." The boy handed Uncle Jack a paper, and took the money, putting it into the container.

Uncle Jack reached out and took the boys exposed balls in his hand, and twisted them. The boy yelped. Uncle Jack squeezed harder, bringing screams from the brat.

"Don't you dare talk to privileged boys, or I'll have your mouth sewn up you miserable little scum bag," he snarled. With a final sharp pull on the boys balls, bringing an even shriller scream from the agonised child, Uncle Jack got into the car and drove off with Daniel and his Mum, leaving the weeping boy trying desperately to call out and sell his papers. He knew nothing of time, but he did know that he had a long wait before his Dad would be back to release him, and to give him whatever punishment he deserved for the night.

Daniel settled down in the back seat of the car behind the two adults. It was pleasant sitting in the shelter and warmth of Uncle Jacks big motor looking out at the cold wet village street. The car passed two more charity boys one naked the other wearing just threadbare shorts both their bodies bearing clear signs of recent whippings. They were crouched in the gutter by two bicycles.

"What are those boys doing," Daniel asked as the car swept by them splashing their bare bodies with muddy water from the street.

"Oh probably cleaning the bikes for their owners. They are very fortunate brats to be given the opportunity to serve their betters in that way. Now they'll have to start all over again after we splashed them with mud going past," said Uncle Jack laughing heartily.

A short way out of the village Uncle Jack turned off the surfaced road onto a gravel drive. A closed gate barred the way. Peering between the two grownup's heads Daniel could see through the rain splashed windscreen of the car a naked boy pushing the gate open.

As they drew level with the child Uncle Jack wound his wind screen down.

"You'll have to do better than that you miserable lump of dog's turd," he shouted at the boy, back handing him hard across a rump that already bore the mark of many strokes of the cane. "I had to stop the car because of your laziness you useless little tyke."

He hit the boy again and drove on. As they drove past Daniel got a closer view of the boy.

"I say Uncle," he piped, "that boy's wrists are fastened to the top bar of the gate."

"Of course they are," his Uncle replied cheerfully. "We can't have him wandering off or going to sleep when he's meant to be minding the gates."

"Do you know," he continued speaking to Daniel's mother, "I pay the father of that boy 5p a day for his services and all he has to do for that money is to open and close the gates for me from 6.30 in the morning to 11 at night and he still can't do the job right. If it's not raining too hard I think I'll walk down after supper and thrash the child. It's the only thing these boys understand."

The car swung round a curve in the drive and Uncle Jack's house came in view. It was a substantial farmhouse three stories high, neat and prosperous in every respect. There was a large sweep of gravel and two boys clad only in tiny threadbare shorts were on their knees picking weeds with their fingers, the rain glistening on their bare skin. Uncle Jack stopped the car outside the front door.

"Come here quick you two brats," he shouted roughly jumping from the car. "Take the cases from the boot into the house and quick about it if you don't want me to warm your miserable bums with the strap."

"Now come into the house you two out of the cold and wet," Uncle Jack continued in much softer tones to Daniel and his Mum.

Uncle Jack lead them across the hall to the sitting room. It was a large room with French windows out onto the lawn. What struck Daniel though were the two boys who scrambled hastily to their feet as they entered the room. One was about Daniel's own age the other perhaps thirteen. They were lean and deeply tanned. Their only clothing were shirts which flapped loosely about their bare bums and were cut off at the front level with their belly buttons. The younger boy had a blue ribbon tied round his hairless balls the older one a red one.

Uncle Jack waived his hand and the two boys sat down their knees so wide apart that they almost rested on the floor. Daniel saw that the boys were sitting on a mirror resting on the carpet which reflected their little balls and their open bums. He saw that both boys were spotlessly clean. Before he could ask any questions his Uncle spoke.

"I suppose Daniel would like his supper now?" he asked.

"Yes please," Daniel's Mum replied. "Something simple and then he can watch the television while we have our dinner."

"Perhaps Macaroni Cheese? I know Mrs Powell my house keeper has prepared some and it is really excellent."

He rang the bell and a small cheerful middle aged lady came into the room.

"Please Uncle Jack," Daniel said, "Can I eat it in here and watch the cartoons on the television?"

"Of course you can. A plate of your macaroni cheese in here for my young nephew if you please."

A few minutes later Mrs Powell reappeared carrying a tray containing a plate heaped with macaroni and a steaming vegetable dish.

"I've brought you the whole lot in case you want seconds," she said kindly to Daniel who had settled down in a chair in front of the TV while his Mother and Uncle chatted quietly at the other end of the room. "I know how hungry young boys get. But be careful both plates are very hot."

"Oh thank you Mrs Powell," Daniel replied. He was a very polite young boy. "But what shall I do for a table?"

"That's no problem," Mrs Powell said placing the tray on the side board and snapping her fingers at the thirteen year old boy. The lad got quickly to his feet and came over to where Daniel was sitting. Daniel though he was not looking very cheerful. Mrs Powell pointed to the floor and the boy knelt down in front of where Daniel was sitting.

"We mustn't spoil his shirt," Mrs Powell said lifting it forward over his head so that his whole body was bare.

"Boy's flesh heals but cloth does not," she remarked cheerfully and using a dish cloth to protect her hands from the hot dishes placed them on the boy's naked back.

The boy squealed as the hot china seared his flesh.

"Be quiet you ungrateful brat," Mrs Powell snapped. "You should be pleased to have an opportunity of serving your betters. I'll see you get something to really cry about later on you dirty little monkey."

Daniel sat happily eating his enjoyment of his food and the cartoons not at all diminished by the whimpering of his boy table.

Daniel scraped his plate clean and feeling pleasantly replete leant back in his chair to watch the television. He was so absorbed in the adventures of the Pink Panther that he did not hear the house keeper return to the room.

"Did you enjoy that Master Daniel?" she asked lifting the empty plate and casserole dish from where they rested on the bare back of the kneeling charity boy.

"Yes, thank you. It was very good," Daniel replied politely his eyes fixed on the two angry red marks left by the hot dishes on the boy table's skin.

"Very good is more than you can say about this ungrateful brat," the housekeeper said angrily kicking the kneeling lad viciously in his bare bottom. "You come along with me now pig's turd and I'll beat some respect into you."

"What's the matter Mrs Thomas?" enquired Uncle Jack from the other side of the room interrupting his conversation with Daniel's mother.

"This filthy lump of dog's shit here wouldn't stay still when I put Master Daniel's dinner plates on his back because they were hot and hurt," the housekeeper said her voice shrill with outrage.

"What," Uncle Daniel roared, turning crimson with rage and loosing for the moment his jovial appearance, "you dirty little tyke out of the goodness of my heart I take you into my house and I allow you to wait upon my guests and myself and you aren't prepared to suffer a burnt back so that my nephew can eat his food quietly in front of the television. I've got a good mind to send you back to your Mummy and Daddy and tell them you're unfit to serve your betters. It would be sound whipping for you then and off to the corrective camp for a spell, which is what you thoroughly deserve."

The kneeling boy began to cry loudly.

"However," Uncle Jack said, "beginning to recover some of his good humour and calming down a bit, "I'm a kind hearted man so I'll deal with this matter myself."

"Oh Sir please Sir thank you Sir," the boy sobbed gratefully.

"Take your shirt off and get hold of your ankles boy," Uncle Jack commanded picking up a heavy cane from the mantle peace over the fire. "And," he continued bending down and pushing the poker deep into the heart of the fire, "after I've given your bum a well deserved bloodying I'll show you how much something really hot hurts. It seems you've forgotten your initial branding so you need reminding."

"You don't mind Anne do you," he said turning to his sister, Daniel's mother, "my thrashing this lout in front of you."

"No, indeed I don't Jack," she replied. "I'm amazed though that you allow such ill behaved ill disciplined little animals in your house. It seems standards have slipped since I left this village. We would never have tolerated such impertinence in my time. I trust you'll flay that little whore till there's not a square inch of skin left on his bum."

"Now Daniel," she ordered, "watch Uncle Jack now and you will see how seriously he takes his responsibilities as a guardian of these boys and how much he cares for their well being. They have to be disciplined or they get lazy and forget their places and the only thing they take notice of is the cane well laid on."

There was no need for this advice to her son. Daniel was staring fascinated at the boy as he bent forward in front of Uncle Jack, the child's slim frail body contrasting with the man's burly frame. Daniel could see from the welts that ran across otherwise smooth flesh of the boy's bottom that this was not the first taste of the cane that the boy had had that day.

Daniel glanced across at his mother. She was staring at the trembling lad her eyes glittering eagerly, three small white teeth showing as she chewed on her bottom lip.

Uncle Daniel rested the cane across the boy's exposed bottom and then paused for a moment as he adjusted something in the crutch of his trousers. There was a big bulge there that Daniel could not remember seeing before. The younger of the two charity boys was he saw staring wide eyed at his fellow a look of fascinated horror in his eyes. The cane, Daniel noticed, was a good metre and a half long and while thick at it's base tapered so that it was hardly thicker than his little finger at it's tip. It seemed the boy's bum quivered beneath it's, for the moment, light touch.

Then Uncle Daniel lifted the cane high over his head. With a grunt of effort he brought it hissing through the air to crack explosively down on the boy's unprotected flesh. The boy screamed and staggered forward a step or two. Daniel noticed how the end of the cane curled round the side of the boy's rump and drew a small bead of red blood at it's tip.

Uncle Daniel waited until the boy was still and then struck again and again and again. The hiss of the cane through the air, the sharp explosive report as it cut into the boy's bare rump, the shrill screams of the tortured boy and the heavy panting of Uncle Jack as he remorselessly flogged the child filled the room. Twice the boy lost his balance and collapsed on the floor. Twice Uncle Jack got him back to his feet with sharp kicks with his heavy brogues. At last Uncle Jack stopped.

"Stay down," he said grimly to the boy. "I have not finished with you yet."

He drew the poker from the fire. Daniel could see it's tip glowing red with heat.

"Daniel," Uncle Jack said pleasantly, "these miserable little animals are ours to do what we like with but generally we try to avoid marking them in a way which will spoil their appearance and thus the pleasure we can derive from them. There are however parts of a boy's body where he can be marked with out it noticing much. You will need to learn these in time. One I will show you now. It is the crease at the base of a boy's bottom. There," he said laying the glowing poker across the boy's bottom just at the point where it joined with his left thigh. The boy screamed and would have straightened had not the housekeeper grabbed him by his bare shoulders.

"And there," Uncle Jack continued repeating the treatment on the opposite side of the boy.

"Now Daniel what did you think of that?" he asked smiling benevolently at his nephew.

"Can I fuck one of the boy's please Uncle Jack? Daniel asked seriously. He had been excited by the sight of the boy's flogging. "Mum said perhaps I could."

"Certainly you can any way try," Uncle Jack sounded delighted. "Now your mother and I are going to have our dinners. You go up stairs and have a bath and get into bed and after we've eaten I'll bring a boy up to you and show you how to do it."

"Oh thanks Uncle Jack," Daniel said excitedly starting to the door.

"Oh and good night Mum," he said remembering his manners and coming back and kissing his mother.

"Now my guests are leaving the room," Uncle Jack said sharply to the two charity boys, "there's no reason why your two miserable little bums should enjoy the luxury of sitting on nice cool glass. Get the chore mat."

The younger of the two boys darted into a corner of the room and brought out a square of fibre matting with a multitude of stiff bristles sticking upwards. The older boy who had been whimpering quietly began to sob uncontrollably.

"Get down on that brat," Uncle Jack ordered seizing the boy by his shoulders and kicking his feet from under him so the he fell with a crash on to the mat.

Daniel could hear the boy's screams as the bristles stabbed into the child's raw burnt bum as he made his way upstairs to bed.

Daniel was heading upstairs to have his bath and to get ready for the new experience promised to him by Uncle Jack. He hadn't really believed it originally when his Mum had said that Uncle Jack might let him practice on one of his boys. He new a little of what to do, because boys in school had talked about fucking, but he had never seen it done, and was anxious about doing it properly. He was glad the Uncle Jack had said he would show him how.

He hoped also that Uncle Jack would let him beat one of the boys. He had liked the feeling he got in his prick when he watched Uncle Jack caning the boy who had been his table. He had really enjoyed the way he had got stiff. When the red hot poker had been applied to his bum, and the boy had screamed even louder, it had seemed to make him even stiffer. It was a feeling he wanted more of. He hoped fervently that the boys would be flogged again before he had to leave, and he determined to keep a sharp eye on them to ensure that they did not get away with any misdemeanour that they would deserve correction for. Even thinking about this made him stiff again, his nine year old little prick stretching uncomfortably against the material of his grey school shorts. (Like all the boys at his school, he did not, and had never been allowed, wear underpants. It was considered soft to do so.)

Reaching his room, he was just about to pull off his shirt when he heard Uncle Jack calling him. Quickly, he turned around, and hurried off down stairs again, wondering what was wrong. Uncle Jack was still in the sitting room with his Mum. The younger of the two charity brats, the one about his own age, with the superbly dark tan had now taken off his shirt and was completely naked. Daniel could see all the lines across the front of his thighs where he had been beaten many times. The marks added to his undoubted beauty however, as did the brand on his lower hip. Daniel did not know it was a brand, and thought to himself that it was a tattoo.

Uncle Jack was just about to say something when there was a loud swish, followed by the sound of a leather landing on bare flesh. It was quickly followed by another and another, and the howling reached a high pitch of agonised screaming.

"Don't mind the noise" said Uncle Jack, "it's only Mrs Thomas giving that miserable lazy lump of shit the beating she promised him because he was whinging at the heat of the plates with your meal on him."

Uncle Jack grinned as an even louder howl came from the outer room.

"Just because I beat him and punished him with the hot poker doesn't mean that he gets off Mrs Thomas' beating. I can assure you that she has never let any brat off a flogging she promised to give him."

Daniel felt his little cock harden again. He seemed to be in a state of constant erection. He felt really content. He noticed that Uncle Jack had a huge bulge in the front of his trousers. I bet he wears underpants thought Daniel's, laughing inwardly to himself.

"'Can I go out there and watch the boy being punished please Uncle Jack, he's such a complaining cry baby that I'd love to see him being really hurt with the strap. "

"Not this time Daniel," smiled his Uncle, "leave him to Mrs Thomas. She'll beat him until his can't stand, and the burns on his worthless little arse will make it so much more painful for him. Then we'll put him out in the yard for the night tied to a tree by his wrists. That will teach him to behave. If he has recovered sufficiently in the morning he'll be put to work in the fields collecting stones to build a wall. But don't worry Daniel, you will get to see some other disciplining in action. Your Mum has suggested that I should take you with me when I go down to the gate to punish the gate boy for his laziness. Turning to the other brat he ordered - you, get the cart, and bring it to the front door, quickly, if you don't want your backside skinned."

"He's a nice looking brat," said Daniel's Mother. "He looks so well naked. I said to Daniel on the way down today that if I had a charity boy, I would keep him naked all the time, no matter what the weather, or the conditions. It only spoils a lot of them being allowed to wear shorts. Daniel's father, before he went away used to insist that Daniel went nude at home during the Summer, and he used to enjoy it. After a while he got used to being in the nude after school nearly every day. His Dad said it was the natural was for boys to be and he regretted that Daniel had to wear conventional clothes to school and out of the house. Though you will see that his shorts are as brief as possible, and again his Dad always said it was important that he should try to have the shortest shorts in the school. There were a few other parents with the same idea ,so we had quite a bit of fun and work with the scissors and sewing machine hadn't we Daniel."

.Daniel grinned sheepishly and agreed. He had always enjoyed wearing really short shorts, and was proud of how well his brown legs looked, bare to the start of his buttocks. He just wished he could be as brown as the charity boy who had gone to get the cart, whatever that was. He also thought how much he missed his Dad, who had gone away to work in the Far East, and would not be back for four years.

"Get a move on you two," said his Mum. "Don't forget Daniel you've still to come back and have your bath so that Uncle Jack can show you how to fuck one of those disgusting little brutes."

Uncle Jack took him by the hand, and led him to the door. It was still quite bright, and while the rain had stopped, there was that cold breeze blowing. There was no doubt that there would be more rain later. The two boys who had been weeding in the front of the house when Daniel had arrived were still down on their knees. They did not look up when the Master and his nephew came out, but seemed to speed up their work.

"If you don't fill those barrel's with weeds tonight you'll get no food, and Mrs Thomas will give you both a good thrashing you lazy ungrateful little turds," he roared at the two kids. "You've had since six o'clock this morning to do it."

Terrified, the two exhausted brats scrabbled away trying to prise up the stubborn weeds with fingers that were sore and bleeding. The hard stony ground cut into their bare knees, but, hardened by months of work like this, they hardly noticed the pain.

"Must be sore on their knees" said Daniel.

"Doesn't matter Daniel," said Uncle Jack. 'If they are sore it's good for them. But they learn from experience that it makes no difference how sore they are, they still have a duty to me and to their parents who care so much for them to keep working until they drop. Even when they drop, the cane can sometimes get another hour or two out of them. These brats start at six in the morning and work until ten or eleven every night. I pay their parents one pound a week for their labour, so I expect a full day out of them or else.'

Just then the boy who had been sent for the cart came trotting around the corner. He was pulling a small rickshaw like vehicle, which had two large wheels, and a cover over the seat, which would just about hold two people. It was just like the rickshaw's that Daniel had seen in pictures of the Far East that his Dad had shown him before he left. The boy pulled the cart over to where they stood, and looked anxiously down at the ground, as all charity boys must. Uncle Jack went to the rear of the cart and unhooked a bag that was there.

"You'll enjoy this Daniel. Sometimes we have great fun with the carts, racing them around the fields. "

The boy shuddered, remembering some of the times he had been whipped to run ever faster pulling the cart behind him over the uneven gound. The slightest stumble brought the whip crashing across his bare back in a searing pain.

Now however he knew this was just a domestic chore, though no doubt he would be made to perform for his masters nephew, who was so superior to him. "Over here," ordered Uncle Jack, and cuffed the boy across the ear.

From the bag he took a bridle and metal bit. The boy obediently opened his mouth, and Uncle Jack forced the cold metal in as far as it would go, so that the corners of the brat's mouth were forced right back. He fastened the strap behind his neck, and pulled it as tight as he could, so that the bit now cut into the corners of the child's mouth. When he was satisfied that it was as tight as possible, he pushed the boy forward.

"Open up," he ordered.

The boy reached behind him, and pulled the cheeks of his bum as far apart as he could. Uncle Jack then took a large expanding plug out of the bag. It was metal, and shaped like a slightly curved carrot. Without any lubrication, Uncle Jack slowly shoved it into the boy. He screamed as much as the bit would allow.

"Great things these," smiled Uncle Jack. "Really makes these animals know they have something inside them. "

When the plug was fully up inside the crying child, Uncle Jack twisted a ring on the end that was sticking out.

"That expands the plug inside" he explained to the awestruck Daniel, "Now it hurts even more, and it can't slip out, even when the animal is running full out."

He then attached a light leather lead to the ring in the plug and put the brat back between the shafts. The balance of the cart was such that, even with two adults sitting in it, it did not tilt backwards. The boys hands were then attached to the shafts with leather strapping to prevent them slipping, and, finally a leather strap in front of him was tightened, so that his chest or stomach could take the strain of pulling the cart.

"Up you get Daniel," and the two of them got into the seat.

It was a bit tight, as Uncle Jack was a big man, standing over six feet, and weighing a good fourteen stone.

He picked up a small whip that was in the cart, and with a loud shout of 'Giddy up', he cracked it across the young brown back in front of him. The boy pulled , slowly getting the cart to move, working up to a good walking pace as another stroke of the whip crashed on his shoulders.

Uncle Jack kept whipping him until he had got sufficient impetus to travel at a good running pace. All the time he kept the reins fairly tight, so that there was no respite for the brats mouth. Then holding the reins in one hand, he showed Daniel how he could order the cart left or right by pulling sharply on the lead attached to the plug in the boy.'

"We'll go the long way so that you can enjoy the ride Daniel," said Uncle Jack.

"Thank you so much Uncle Jack," said Daniel, "This is really fantastic. I don't know when I have had so much fun."

Then Uncle Jack handed Daniel the whip.

"You use this to make him go faster. Try to hit him on the shoulders, back and bum. If you hit him on the balls it sometimes causes a brat to buck a bit."

Daniel was in heaven. He lifted the whip and brought it down as hard as he could on the boy's back. There was immediate reaction and the boy speeded up.

"Well done" said Uncle Jack, "now keep whipping him and see how fast he can go."

Daniel needed no second invitation and was soon flogging the racing brat for all he was worth. Eventually, after one extra savage cut, a trickle of blood rolled down the by now completely striped back in front of them.

"Well done again'" shouted Uncle Jack. "See if you can do that again. "

It took another three blows of the whip to break the skin again, as it was a fairly light whip, and, after all, Daniel was only nine.

At last the gates appeared in view. The boy whose job it was to open them was still tied to them, and when he saw them coming quickly moved to open the gates in the hope of avoiding another beating. However Uncle Jack stopped tthe cart by pulling hard on the reins and then jerking savagely on the plug-ring.

The pony boy slowed and stopped, gasping for breath,. The sweat poured off him despite the cold breeze. Blood trickled down his bare back and into the cleft of his arse.

Uncle Jack hopped down from his seat and untied the panting boy from the shafts of the cart. There was blood at both the corners of his mouth where the vicious bit dug in. A thick stream of mucous dribbled from his noose mixing with saliva running from his mouth before dripping on to his heaving chest. He was exhausted. Uncle Jack led him by the reins over to the pillar beside the gate. There he hooked the reins over the gate and pulled on the lead in the plug-ring until he had to stand right up on his toes.

He turned to the wretched naked gateboy, who, unlike the pony boy, was freezing from having been tied to the gate since dawn.'

"We've come to give you the flogging I promised you,, you lazy good for nothing lump of pig shit. I'm going to cut that lazy arse of yours to bits and I hope your father does the same when he come to collect you tonight - if he does."

Tears came to the boys eyes. He knew he deserved to be flogged and he knew as well that when his daddy discovered how badly he had behaved he would be so furious at his ingratitude to the master and himself that he would indeed give him a second beating. That is if he came. Some nights of course he was too busy and quite rightly felt he did not have to take the trouble to come and untie his worthless boy so he would be left tied up overnight and be there to start work the next day. This meant as well that he got no food those nights, but he knew as well that that was only the treatment he deserved.

"Please Sir, thank you Sir," he wept, "I am sorry for being such a lazy lump of shit, Thank you for taking the trouble to thrash me. I will try to improve but I know that you will be kind enough to keep beating me until I finish as a charity boy. Please do not spare me, Please flog me until you are satisfied that I have been given a proper lesson."

Daniel felt hard again as he saw his uncle take a long cruel whippy cane out of the cart.

As Uncle Jack approached the sobbing gate boy a man and woman appeared strolling along the public road.

"Hello Jack," the man called, "lovely evening."

"Yes George. Out for a stroll?"

"Oh look," the woman interrupted, "they've used our Nicky as their pony boy."

"Why so they have. I hope you drove that little brat of ours really hard Jack. He's an obstinate lazy bit of shit although God knows his Mother and I have tried to flog some sense in to him."

"It's my nephew here who used the whip," Uncle Jack said with a touch of pride in his voice, "I think you could say he got as much out of the little tyke as he had to give but check the brat over if you want to."

The man glanced across at Daniel. He thought the boy with his tight shorts that revealed the full length of his firm tanned thighs looked as though he had the makings of a good charity boy. His skin was not quite as brown nor was the boy as thin as a charity boy but he could imagine him stripped and branded. He wondered if the boy had been circumcised.

He was presumably Jack's brother's boy and he remembered scandalous stories about him before, he had been sent away from the village by his parents, of excessive sympathy to charity boys. Attempts to persuade the trustees to forbid the excessive beating of charity boys, when every one knew that the more such boys were flogged the better. A suggestion that a barn with clean straw should be provided in which the boy's could sleep on snowy days when, again, it was common knowledge that it was the harshness of their living conditions that gave the boys the health and endurance to serve their betters. It was even rumoured that he had suggested that parents should be obliged to ensure that their brats got at least one meal a day despite the great inconvenience this might cause and the fact that all agreed that boys should be kept hungry. Subversive ideas that if propagated would undermine the whole social fabric of the village. The next thing might even have been a proposal that charity boys should no longer be branded or publicly circumcised. No wonder his parents had shipped him out of the place.

He wondered if his son was similarly inclined. If he was, the sooner he was inducted as a charity boy the better. He was a pretty little lad. It would be quite enjoyable taking a hand in training him. He kept these thoughts to himself. It was obvious the boy's Uncle thought the world of him, for the moment at least.

The pony boy forced to stand on the tip of his toes by the taught plug reign stood with his head bowed as his mother and father walked over to him.

"Well Nicky," the man spoke roughly, "I hope you are grateful to your master for choosing to use you as his pony boy."

"Yes Daddy," the boy said speaking with difficulty for he was still panting from his exertions drawing the cart. "I am very grateful to my Master for choosing to use me and to the young master for whipping me so hard and getting all the effort out of me that I had to give him. And I hope on the way back he'll whip me even harder so that I am forced to run faster than ever before and I am grateful to you and Mummy for giving me to the master so that I can serve him. I am a very lucky charity boy to have a Master and a Mummy and Daddy who discipline and work me so hard."

"Yes you are a lucky little brat and don't you forget it," his father snapped. "Now let's have a look at your idle little carcass."

Hooking his walking stick over the crook of his arm the man moved behind his son. The boy whimpered as his father ran his hands down his naked back.

"Did you do these young man," he asked Daniel jovially as he pressed his fingers into the still bleeding cuts left by the whip in the pony boy's brown skin.

"Yes Sir," Danny replied grinning proudly.

"You've got a real expert with the whip there Jack," the man remarked cheerfully and Uncle Jack smiled and looked pleased.

The man walked round the pony boy so that he could examine the child's front. He noticed how the lash had curled about the boys shoulders to raise deep purple weals the tightly stretched skin of his ribcage. He put his hand under the boy's chin and tipped his head back. He nodded approval as he saw the blood trickling down the boy's chin from where the steel bit had torn his mouth, mixing with the mucus dribbling from his nostrils. He pushed a finger into the boy's mouth and pulled back his lips to see how sore they were. He smiled as his son's whimpers turned into a shrill scream of pain.

Then he frowned and stepped back.

"You ungrateful brat," he shouted hitting the boy as hard as he could across his chest with his walking stick. "You lazy lump of dog's shit." He hit him again. "I'll teach you proper respect for your betters you filthy little runt."

He hit the boy again and again with his heavy stick with all the force he was capable of exercising. The boy held rigidly in place by the taught plug lead wailed loudly.

"What ever has the ghastly little brat done wrong?" the woman asked.

"There was resentment in his eyes when I looked into them," the man said continuing to belabour his son with his walking stick.

"What?" the woman screamed in outrage, "After all we and his Master here has done for him. It just shows how the only to get through to these animals understand is to thrash them. For heaven's sake hit the ungrateful little brute harder Dear."

Rightly enraged by her sons intolerable behaviour the woman started to kick him on the shins with her heavy leather walking shoes.

The boy knocked off balance staggered and screamed even more shrilly than before as the taught reign pulled on the plug clamped in his backside.

What made it worse for him was he knew he deserved this beating. He had been very wicked. He had for a moment allowed himself to question why he was a pony boy and why the young master should have the right to whip him. These were evil thoughts and he knew he must be grateful to his Mummy and Daddy for taking the trouble to flog them out of him.

Eventually the man stopped out of breath.

"Well Jack," he panted, "I leave it to you to give the little runt the further flogging he undoubtedly deserves when you get him back to the stables."

"And you young man be sure you use the whip well on the way back to the farm. He needs it."

With a friendly wave man and woman continued on their walk.

Uncle Jack turned away from the sobbing pony boy and lifting the long whippy cane prepared to chastise the cowering gate boy.

Chapter 2

"Oh there you are young Sir," she said kindly, "The bath room is just behind me," she said, "and your bedroom is opposite."

Taking the things from the woman Daniel went into the bathroom. It was luxuriously appointed. A vast sunken bath cum Jacuzzi, a shower with a complex of jets and dials which seemed to promise streams of water from every angle at varying forces and temperatures, a lavatory and an odd object he did not recognise that looked a bit like a cross between a toilet and a low wash hand basin but was neither, all set in a large thickly carpeted mirror lined room.

What a helpful lady his uncles house keeper was he thought to himself. So nice and friendly, although she had not been very friendly to the charity boys, now he came to think of it. He wondered what it was like to be always sworn at and abused as they were. He shuddered slightly at the thought and hugged himself. Why did they stand for it? Why didn't they simply walk out of the house and go back to their Mums and Dads he was sure they would understand if they did.

Daniel turned the taps of the bath releasing a stream of instant hot water. He started to slowly undress, every now and again stopping to examine his reflection, in one or other of the mirrors, for like all young boys he was not without vanity, conducting a sort of private strip tease for his own amusement. He really looked, he thought as he examined himself through the wreaths of steam that rose from the hot bath water, quite nice. Slim build, fair hair, blue eyes, clear skin, tight little bottom, firm nicely rounded thighs he knew he was an attractive looking little boy.

He thought of the charity boys he had seen. The paper boy, dressed only in his tattered shorts, tethered to his stand in the freezing rain, the vicious chain biting into his bare thigh. He remembered the older boy in Uncle Jack's sitting room stripping for his beating and bending to offer his bottom to the cane, the crack of wood on his bare flesh, and his screams as the red hot poker was laid against his quivering unprotected flesh. He began to become excited.

He was he thought quite as good looking as any of the charity boys. Not that he looked the same as them. His ribs did not stand out quite as much as theirs seemed to and the little dimples on each side of his bum were not as pronounced. His thighs were slightly fatter as well. His skin was not as tanned as theirs and of course the smooth skin of his bottom was unmarked by the cane. He wondered what he would look like if he was a charity boy. He tried to imagine himself thinned down and tanned. He twisted about in front of the mirrors trying to get a good view of his pert little backside and picturing it bisected by livid weal's.

What was it like to be a charity boy? to exist only to serve your betters; to see boys like himself warmly dressed and well fed while you yourself were denied clothes and food; to be bossed about and abused and beaten for the slightest fault.

He tried to imagine himself sitting on the mirror in the drawing room, his knees spread wide, a ribbon tied round his balls, knowing that at any moment he might feel the bight of the cane across his bare flesh.

He found he was becoming more and more excited. Was it the memory of the sufferings of the charity boys that was doing this? It had to be. It could not be that he was excited by the thought of being a charity boy himself. Deeply troubled and a little frightened Daniel stepped into the bath.

A good deal of popular prejudice clouds the truth about the attitude of boys of Daniel's age to baths and cleanliness. Such boys do not dislike baths all together. In fact they enjoy the occasional bath but the key word is occasional. It, if it is to be taken willingly, must fit in with other and more pressing priorities, visits to friends, favourite television programmes and so on. A regular bath at a regular time on a regular day is never popular. Nor are boys naturally grubby although many people think they are. Like pigs if facilities are provided at a time and place that suits them they will keep themselves clean. Also like pigs, if this is not done, they will quickly become filthy. Fortunately unlike pigs boys are amenable to discipline and if properly schooled can be trained to keep themselves sweet even in the most adverse conditions provided only the sanctions for failing to do so are sufficiently severe.

Daniel on his occasion was in the mood for a bath. He had had a long train journey and felt grubby. There was nothing else for him to do at that moment. The bath with it's Jacuzzi fittings invited experimentation. He felt excited and a little nervous. A bath offered a period for quiet reflection. He stretched himself out in the bath and dreamed excitedly of well whipped naked boys. After a time the water began to cool. He towelled himself down and putting on his pyjamas and nice warm dressing gown padded across the corridor in his wool lined slippers to his bedroom.

It was quite a large room with a single bed, a couple of easy chairs and a bookcase. Since nice Uncle Jack had promised to come up stairs to see him after his dinner and to show him how to fuck a boy he did not lie down on the bed. He went to the book case. The books though were all grown up ones which he found boring and difficult to understand. Abandoning the 120 days of Sodom he picked at random a magazine from a pile that lay on the bottom shelf. It was a copy of an old National Geographical Magazine. Leafing through it he came across an article on ancient Rome with a number of artists reconstruction's of Roman life. His attention was riveted by a picture of a slave market. It showed a raised platform on which stood a fat oily Levantine wearing a striped tunic, clearly the auctioneer, a large half naked Negro carrying a heavy whip, his assistant and a naked blonde girl whose long blonde hair, this being the National Geographical Magazine covered the most interesting bits, the merchandise on offer. Standing around at the foot of the platform were a number of fat toga clad figures clearly on the point of bidding and huddled in a corner on the ground a group of naked and near naked figures waiting their turn on the auction block.

He stared at the picture his throat tight with excitement. What would it have been like to have been one of that group of captives waiting their turn on the auction block. Waiting knowing that soon you were going to be dragged onto the platform and stripped naked for inspection and then to be sold like an animal to the highest bidder. He was deep in these imaginings when he was roused by the sound of a man's heavy footstep outside his bedroom door. He glanced up and Uncle Jack came in followed by the two charity boys that had been in the sitting room.

"Well here I am Daniel," Uncle Jack said in his cheerful friendly way and then turning to the two charity boys rapped.

"Quickly you two. Surely you know better by now than to keep your betters waiting. Show a bit of respect and gratitude by getting a move on or I'll bloody both your behinds."

The two boys shuffled into the room and stood side by side shifting uneasily on their bare feet obviously overcome by being in the presence of two such superior beings as Daniel and his Uncle Jack.

"Now these two little animals here are what we call charity boys Daniel," Uncle Jack said quietly. "Out of the kindness of my heart I have brought them into my house. They are lazy little animals that need constant watching and disciplining. They're so stupid that the only way to teach them any thing is to flog it into them. They have no rights. You can do what ever you want with them. Thrash them with the utmost severity for the slightest resistance or disobedience and then report them to me and I will beat them again before I send them back to their Mummies and Daddies who will repeat the treatment. That way perhaps in time they will learn how to serve their natural superiors."

"I am going to use you," he said slapping the older of the two boys on the side of the head with his open hand, "to show your young Master here how to fuck a boy."

"While I'm giving you this one," He viciously prodded the smaller boy with the blue ribbon round his balls in his ribs with his index finger.

"You are going to have the honour of being my nephews boy whore for the night. Well say some thing brat."

"Sir please Sir," the younger boy stammered, "thank you for choosing me. I promise to do my best to please your nephew Sir. Thank you Sir … and please Sir if I do any thing wrong I hope you will beat me very hard so that I learn to do better next time Sir, thank you Sir."

"Doesn't his Mum and Dad mind?" asked Daniel

"His Mum and Dad will be very pleased if you pay them the compliment of fucking their brat. They will be delighted that so inferior a little brute has attracted the attention of important people like ourselves. And," he went on, "they will be furious if the tyke fails to please you once you have chosen him. If that happens they'll give him the flogging of his young life which is what the ungrateful l little tart would deserve. Why I am sure his Daddy has been working on his bum ever since the brat was accepted as a charity boy for it to be ready for one of his betters to enjoy. Isn't that so boy? Widening your hole with his fingers and pushing a plug up it every night."

"Yes Sir, please Sir," the boy quavered in terror, "my Daddy's been very good to me Sir and I'm very grateful to him. He got two fingers right up to the knuckles into me last night Sir although it hurt a lot and I cried - which I know was naughty and ungrateful of me and I deserved the thrashing he gave me. I'll do my best to make my Mummy and Daddy proud of me and to repay them for all the care they have taken of me Sir by trying as hard as I can to give the Young Sir a good time Sir I promise Sir."

"You better had brat or it'll be the worse for you. A sound flogging then off to the special unit for a bit of re-education."

The boy hearing these words began to whimper.

"Right Daniel there are various positions that you can require a boy to adopt so that you can fuck him. But the first thing to do is to get him to lubricate your cock."

"Now some people use jelly or Vaseline on their pricks. In my view that's a waste of money. There's no point in spoiling these brats and any way they should feel it when they've got their master's cocks up their bums. On the other hand I'm a kind soft hearted considerate man as you know so I rarely fuck any boy without any lubrication at all. The cheapest and pleasantest way to do it is to have the boy suck you."

While he was speaking Uncle Jack was undoing his flies. Now he let his trousers fall to his ankles revealing powerfully muscled legs covered in a thick coat of coarse black hair. He bent over and removed his underpants. He straightened and unbuttoned his shirt allowing it to fall open to reveal a cruelly curved massive cock that jutted out in front of him from a dark forest of tangled pubic hair. Daniel stared fascinated at this at his Uncle's pulsating rod. He had never seen a man's cock fully erect before. He was amazed by it's size and the weight and strength of the man's body that carried it.

"Well get down boy quickly or do you want this up your bum dry?" Uncle Jack rasped.

The older charity boy with the red ribbon round his balls dropped quickly to his knees in front of the man and ran his tongue along the length of the man's throbbing dick from it's base to it's heavy pink tip. For a moment the lad's tongue explored the slit at it's tip then he took it into his mouth. His cheeks began to move as he sucked. Suddenly Uncle Jack grabbed the boy by his ears and jerked his head forward jamming the full length of his cock down his throat. Daniel saw the boy's eyes bulge as he gagged and fought for breath. Uncle Jack held him there for a second or two before loosening his hold on the child allowing him to pull back a little. But only for a moment, then he pulled him forward again plunging his iron hard rod deep into his throat.

"That's enough," Uncle Jack said releasing the boy's ears, "now bend over that bed, spread your leg's and push that arse of yours up into the air."

"These brats are so selfish," he said to Daniel, "that they would try to safe their bums at the expense of your pleasure by attempting to get you to cum in their mouths. Don't let them get away with it."

"Now to work," Uncle Jack moved so that he was standing directly behind the boy.

Daniel stared at the man's heavily built body with it's pelt of coarse hair and it's enormous cock dwarfed the slim hairless body of the young boy. It seemed to him impossible that so massive an object as his Uncle's rod could be forced into so fragile a child without tearing him open.

Uncle Jack caught his nephews gaze and laughed.

"It's a big nail," he said grinning, "but fortunately I have a big hammer to drive it in."

He put his thumbs on either side of the boy's crack and pulled it open. The boy screamed and Daniel saw his uncle was deliberately digging his thumb nails into the raw flesh where he had scorched the boy's rump scorched with the hot poker.

Uncle Jack released one cheek of the boy's bottom and took aim with his prick. He drove forward. The boy's whimpers rose to a full blooded scream. For a split second the boy seemed to resist the intrusion of the man's prick. Then Uncle Jack thrust forward savagely once more and forced the head into the lad. Remorselessly Uncle Jack hammered his pulsating cock into the boy until it's full length was buried in the child's bum. Despite the boy's howls and obvious distress Daniel was amazed to see the muscles in his bottom begin to pump as he responded to the man's brutal assault. Uncle Jack increased the tempo of his thrusting. There was no sound in the room except Uncle Jack's panting, the moans of the boy and the slap of the man's hips against the lad's bare bum. Then Uncle Jack throwing his head back gave a great shout. A series of sharp convulsions racked his otherwise rigid body. Uncle Jack sighed, smiled and stepped away from the boy.

"All right whore," he rapped, "you know what to do. Get on with it."

The boy who had fallen to his knees and was now on all fours at Uncle Jack's feet hunkered back and began to lick and suck the man's cock.

"It's completely a matter of taste Daniel," Uncle Jack remarked, "but I personally always get the boy I've fucked to clean my cock afterwards. It sort of completes the job."

He glanced down at the boy whose head was pressed against his crutch and swore.

"You lazy little fool," he shouted at the younger lad. "What the hell do you think you are up to bitch. Can't you see he's going to soil the carpet if you don't clean his bum up. The stuff is beginning to dribble down his thighs already."

The child dropped quickly to his knees behind the other boy and began to lap urgently at his crack.

By now Daniel was thoroughly aroused.

"All right," Uncle Daniel said, "I can see you're eager to begin Daniel take your dressing gown and pyjamas off the boy will be ready for you in a moment.

He smiled indulgently as Daniel's 4 inches of boy's erect flesh was revealed.

"Come on that's finished," he continued addressing the two charity boys in very different tones to those he used when speaking to his nephew.

"You," he planted a vigorous kick on the upturned bottom of the younger boy, "up and get your bum in position for my nephew to enjoy it."

"And you," he said to the older boy, "use your tongue to lubricate his cock."

The smaller boy scrambled to his feet and turning took hold of his ankles offering his bottom to his young master. Daniel, his prick now well wetted with saliva, used his hands to open the boy's crack. He felt the child push backwards responding eagerly to his touch.

Again there was a second or twos resistance as the boy's anus tensed in a reflex reaction to the touch of Daniel's prick head which was now standing proud and clear of his foreskin. But with both boys eager and the comparatively small size of Daniel's cock this was soon overcome. Once past the child's sphincter it seemed to Daniel as the boy's bottom closed about his rod drawing it down into his body. Then there were a few brief minutes of intense ecstasy as Daniel rode the other boy until he felt his own blood surge and a momentary blackness descended on his mind.

He stumbled back and Uncle Jack bent to examine his prick, flaccid now and wrinkled.

"No semen," Uncle Jack remarked, "just a bit of boy's filth. Still it will come in time. You just need to mature a bit. Well I'll be off now. I hope you enjoyed that."

Laughing he ruffled his young nephews fair hair.

"Oh yes Uncle Jack. It was wicked. Could I keep him," he nodded to his little bum boy who was busying himself licking his better's cock clean, "a bit longer."

"Of course you can Daniel," kind Uncle Jack said indulgently. "Just kick him out when you've finished and the housekeeper will put a plug up his bum and send him home to his Mummy and Daddy. He only lives the other side of the village a mere five miles across country and he'll make it by first light even with the snow."

Daniel waited until Uncle Jack had left the room and then told the boy to stand up. The lad got to his feet and stood with his head bowed, his hands hanging loose and open by his sides. Daniel walked slowly round the child while he shifted uneasily on his bare feet under his gaze.

Daniel thought that apart from his being a little skinnier than him and a good deal more tanned the boy looked remarkably like him leaving aside the welts across his bottom from a recent beating and the letters "BC" scored in his flesh just below his left hip.

"What are these?" Daniel asked touching this mark.

"Sir please Sir, the boy stammered nervously, "they're my brand mark Sir. They were put there at my first induction service Sir. They're there so I never forget that I'm a charity boy and that I have to feel grateful to my Mummy and Daddy and all the other people in the village who work so hard to teach me to be an obedient docile hard working boy."

"It must have hurt," Daniel remarked.

"Oh yes Sir. It was meant to Sir. To make sure I never forgot Sir. We're very lucky that people take so much care of our training and are so thoughtful Sir. We are all very grateful for it Sir. It's like my cock Sir. I had a bit of skin at the top of it like you Sir but we charity boys aren't allowed to keep it. It was taken off me at my second induction service and that hurt a lot too especially when they slapped the anti sceptic cream on. The pain will never let me forget who I am and how I have to work hard for my Mummy and Daddy and be grateful to them for the care they have given me."

Daniel moved away from the charity boy to stand by the mirror. He twisted round in front of it trying to imagine what he would look like with his bum decorated with the charity boy brand and a few stripes from the cane. He wondered too what it was like to be so well disciplined and so harshly treated. He began to get hard again.

He glanced across at the charity boy and was shocked to see a sly and far from respectful smile on the lad's face.

"You're wondering what it would be like to be me," the boy said with a giggle and with none of the 'sirs' that had up to then so liberally dotted his speech.

"You want to be a charity boy that's what you want," now there was open contempt in the boy's voice.

"Get out," Daniel shouted throwing himself on the bed and burying his head in the duvet. "Get out."

Daniel heard the door open quietly

"Charity Boy," the lad said contemptuously.

The door closed behind him

Daniel's mother and Uncle Jack were sitting at the dining room table enjoying a substantial breakfast. The room was filled with the scent of frying bacon and hot coffee which no doubt made the two charity boys who hovered around them anxiously trying to anticipate their every requirement very conscious of their own empty stomachs. Having shared a bowl full of cold porridge mixed with swill at 5 am they watched their betters eating with hungry eyes.

"Well Daniel seems to be a very nice young boy and most promising. You should have seen the way he treated the little runt I gave him last night. Really enjoyed himself and no nonsense about worrying about if he was hurting the brat. Seemed to fully grasp that the only thing that mattered was that he should enjoy himself however much the charity boy suffered."

"I am so glad to hear that Jack. You know I have been worried about him ever since I discovered how soft Tom was. I still feel your parents let us all down by allowing him to leave the village. If that's the way he felt they should have enrolled him as a charity brat and saved a lot of trouble for everybody. I would do that with Daniel if I had any suspicion at all that he was given to such perverse tastes."

"Yes I am afraid my Mother and Father did nobody a favour with their foolish indulgence of my young brother. It must have been a shock for you when you discovered the truth. I do agree about Daniel too. Any signs of weakness of that sort on his part then it would be a false kindness not to have him properly disciplined. Still on the evidence of last night all seems to be well which pleases me because with no child of my own and I intend to make him my heir provided he turns out all right. I asked both of you down this weekend so I could have a look at him."

A naked boy came into the room shaking partly from fear at being in the presence of so fierce a disciplinarian as Uncle Jack and partly from cold. That he was cold was not surprising as he had been waiting for the past two hours outside the front door of the farm house in the chilly wind and driving rain waiting for the post man so that Uncle Jack could receive any mail delivered without any delay.

"Come on boy," Uncle Jack snapped impatiently, "bring the mail here quickly. Don't keep me waiting."

The frightened lad hurried over to the table. He was carrying a large parcel together with a number of letters. Bowing humbly he held these to Uncle Jack but so nervous was he and so cold his hands that one of the letters escaped from his grasp and fell on the floor.

"Pick it up you useless clumsy little tyke," Uncle Jack roared snatching the rest of the post from the hapless child.

"I haven't time to thrash you myself now for," he continued as the boy grovelled after the errant envelope on the floor at his feet. "Go to Mrs Thomas this instant and tell her she's to give you six cuts of the cane on your useless bum for clumsiness."

"Now let me see," he continued tearing the wrapping paper from the parcel as the boy ran wailing from the room, "what's inside this. It's quite like Christmas isn't it?"

"Well what ever is this?" The paper fell away to reveal a light coloured plastic door mat its bristles broken and jagged from much use. "Ha there's a letter."

"Ouch," he pulled his hand back quickly and sucked his thumb. "Those bristles are sharp."

"Now let's see what this letter says. Damn I've got some blood on it. Why it's from my friend Mark Legg we were at school together you know and had some high old times there I can tell you."

"But whatever does he want to send me an old plastic foot mat for?"

"He came and stayed here last Summer for a week, you know," Uncle Jack said as he unfolded the letter, "thoroughly enjoyed himself and proved to be really excellent with the charity boys. Stood absolutely no nonsense from them. Well when I tell you he broke four canes on their bottoms while he was here that'll show you how good he is."

"Ha here we are. The plastic foot mats - he says he saw this in a house he visited and it struck him immediately it might well be an improvement on the chore mats being cheaper and more uncomfortable for the boy's bottoms. Would I like to suggest their use to the trustees. What an excellent idea."

"I think we should try them out now. You boy spread that on the floor and sit on it. Sit on it I said boy not lower yourself gently. That's better now don't fidget."

"Right let's see what else he says. Oh good he's proposing to pay me another visit and asks if he can bring his eleven year old ward Stanley with him. He says that the child is spoilt and needs disciplining. Well he's bringing the boy to the right place for that."

"Now how good is that mat. Stand up boy and show me your bottom. Why good, good, the bristles have drawn blood. Well Mark has a real feel for this sort of thing."

Daniel woke early in the morning and lay in his bed thinking miserably about his future. He felt ashamed of himself. How could he feel sympathy with such inferior little animals as the charity boys and how was it possible for a decent proper manly little boy to become excited imagining that he was one. He knew though that that was his position and he knew therefore that he was as low and as contemptible as they were. He knew too that he had to tell his Mum and his Uncle Jack the truth. It would be very wicked to deceive them, who had been so kind to him, by pretending to be some one he was not.

It was difficult enough to make that decision. It was even harder to summon up the courage to go down stairs and to make the announcement. In the end he forced himself out of bed and dressed himself.

Going down stairs wearing his school uniform of long socks, grey flannel shorts, grey shirt and navy blue pullover he met a charity boy coming up. The boy did not stand to one side but blocked his way. As Daniel stepped round him the boy smiled contemptuously and murmured "we all know you're really one of us."

Daniel blundered blindly into the dining room.

"Ha Daniel," Uncle Jack greeted him bluffly, "had a bit of a lie in did you? No wonder with what you got up to last night. I hope that brat I chose for you behaved himself. Just tell me if he didn't and I'll have him flogged."

"Go to the kitchen now you lazy young animals and bring Master Daniel's breakfast to him at once."

"Now Daniel just look at this plastic mat a friend of mine has sent me. He suggests using such mats in place of chore mats. What do you think. Put your hand on the bristles and feel how sharp they are. Should certainly stop those boys dozing off don't you think lazy though they are?"

"Yes Uncle. Uncle, Mum I have to tell you something."

"Yes what's that my boy?"

"I… .I want to be a charity boy."

There was a moments total silence as the two adults stared at him thunder struck.

"Well there we are then," Uncle Jack said surprisingly mildly.

"Well I've got to be off," he continued folding his napkin. "There's a meeting of the committee at 11 this morning at the Rectory. "Bring him there then and we'll offer him to the Trustees then."

"Yes all right Jack," Daniel's Mum said quite calmly. "Now sit down Daniel and have your breakfast like a good boy. There isn't all that much time to spare."

Daniel did as he was told and wolfed down his food hungrily. He felt much better now he had made a clean breast of things and he was encouraged by the mild way his Uncle and Mum had reacted. He had expected a great deal more shouting and argument finishing up with his being stripped and beaten like all the other boys. Perhaps they loved him so much they would be kinder to him than the others?

"Well I'm off now," Mary Uncle Jack said to Daniel's mother and then. "That's a nice watch you have there boy."

Daniel did not notice the changed way in which he was addressed.

"Yes it is Uncle," he replied, "it was a gift from my Dad before he went away. It can tell the time in four continents, it has a set of computer games, a stop watch, an alarm and is waterproof to." He spoke eagerly because he was very proud of this watch.

"Yes," Uncle Jack reached out and caught hold of his wrist, none too gently, "a nice watch, young William Smythe, Dr Smythe's son was saying he wanted a new watch. It would do for him."

He began to unbuckle the watch from Daniel's thin wrist.

"It's my watch Uncle," Daniel protested tearing his wrist away, "you can't give it to somebody else."

A heavy blow on the side of his head sent him sprawling from his chair.

"You ungrateful lump of dog's shit," Uncle Jack shouted kicking him viciously in the ribs. "You don't own anything any longer. You're going to be a charity boy. Charity boys own nothing." Every word was punctuated by a hard kick.

Uncle Jack turned and stormed from the room slamming the door behind him.

Daniel dragged himself painfully to his feet. His ribs ached were Uncle Jacks heavy shoes had kicked him. Blood ran down the side of his head where it had banged against the leg of the table when one of the kicks had knocked him against it. He was sobbing loudly. The world which such a short time ago had seemed friendly and kind had suddenly turned into a very hostile place.

"Really Daniel," his mother shouted at him her face crimson with rage, "you are the wickedest little boy I have ever come across. Uncle Daniel and I out of the kindness of our hearts allow you to stay with us as a charity boy and you have the insolence to answer nice kind Uncle Jack back and argue with him you ungrateful child."

Daniel began to cry harder. Now he had upset his Mum as well as his Uncle Jack. He must be he thought all the things his Mum said.

"Oh Mum," he wailed and was immediately hit on the side of his head with a table-spoon by his mother.

"Don't you call me mum you frightful little turd," she shouted. "You're a charity boy now. You call me Mummy and everybody else Sir or Miss and don't you forget it brat."

She hit him again.

"No Mummy, I'm sorry Mummy," poor Daniel sobbed, "and I'm sorry I've been such a wicked ungrateful little boy and upset you and Uncle Jack. I'll try and do better in future."

"You better had you nasty little animal or you'll have a bloody bottom in no time at all. Now to teach you a lesson you can take that watch round to Dr Smythe's house and give it to young William. You must say to William 'Please Sir this watch is much too good for a stupid miserable little charity boy like me. I would be very grateful if you would take it and keep it for yourself.' Do you understand?"

Daniel nodded miserably.

"Then get along with you, you lazy little runt. His house is only about two miles from here so if you run both ways you'll be back well before I'm due to take you to the rectory for your application to be a charity boy to be considered by the committee. Don't you dare be late though or I'll give you to Mrs Thomas to flog and you know how hard she beats you charity brats and quite right too. A good hard beating is all you scum understand."

Daniel started towards the door tears still running down his cheeks.

"Where do you think you are going brat?" His mother's voice brought him up short.

"To Dr Smythe's house like you said Mummy," he sobbed

"It's raining you stupid runt." Indeed Daniel saw looking out through the dining room window it was more than raining. Sleet mixed with snow was being driven across the garden by a cold east wind.

"I'll put my coat on Mummy."

"No you won't you stupid brat. Who do you think you are. I'm not having your clothes ruined out in this. I'll be selling them all to Oxfam and it would lower the price I would get for them if they got all wet. Strip off this instance."

Daniel looked at his mother aghast. He had become used to running around the house naked when his father was at home but the thought of going into the village without any clothes embarrassed him.

His mother got up from the chair and walked over to the fire-place. She picked up the cane that rested there and lashed her son hard across his thighs catching him just below his shorts. She smiled with satisfaction as an angry livid weal formed across Daniel's smooth brown skin. The first of many I have no doubt she thought.

"Who do you think you are brat," she roared. "When I tell you to do something you do it. You don't argue. You don't hesitate. You don't even think. You do it. You should be grateful and honoured that I bother with a sordid little beast like you at all. NOW STRIP."

With fumbling fingers Daniel pulled off his clothes as quickly as he could. In a few short seconds he was completely naked.

It was bitterly cold outside. The same four naked boys were on their hands and knees weeding the gravel drive as on the previous day. They did not look up as Daniel ran past them. They did not dare to do so as someone might have seen them and to pause from their work, which they had begun at half past five that morning and would continue till nine at night, would have earned them a severe thrashing. Daniel noticed that the fingers with which they were pulling up individual blades of grass were torn and bleeding.

At first the gravel hurt Daniel's bare feet but soon they were soon numbed with cold. Daniel helped the gate boy, his back and bum ribbed with the bruises from Uncle Jack's beating of the previous evening, push the heavy drive gate open.

"I'm better off than him," he thought. "Naked and chained by his wrists to the gate in this freezing weather. At least I am able to move around and soon I will be back in a nice warm house."

Dr Smythe's house was distinguished by a brass name plate on one gate post. Daniel ran up the drive and rang the front door bell. He stood panting and shivering on the door step waiting. The door was opened by a woman whom he supposed was Mrs Smythe.

"Please Miss… ," he began but got no further before the woman picking up a clothes brush that lay on the hall table hit him hard across the head.

"What do you mean you stupid little tyke coming and ringing the front door bell as if you were a normal child. Go to the back door and wait until some one can be bothered to deal with a filthy animal like you. Go on." She kicked him in the stomach and slammed the door closed.

Daniel pulled himself gingerly to his feet and padded round to the back of the house. He stood on the back door step in the freezing cold not daring to knock on it. After about ten minutes the door swung open. It was the woman again.

"Well," she said.

"Please Miss I've come to give this watch to your son. It's too good for a charity boy like me." He held out his wrist so that the woman could see the watch.

"Any thing is too good for a charity boy," the woman snapped. "Wait."

She slammed the door again.

Daniel had to wait another ten minutes or so before the door was opened by a boy about two years older than him. The lad was dressed in jeans and a thick sweater. Daniel could see Mrs Smythe standing behind him in the kitchen.

"Well?" The boy demanded.

"Please Sir this watch is much too good for a stupid miserable little charity boy like me. I would be very grateful if you would take it and keep it for yourself," Daniel said mindful of his mother's instructions and once again holding his wrist out so that the boy could see the watch.

"Let me see," the boy said pulling the watch from Daniel's wrist.

"For heavens sake William," Mrs Smythe shouted, "don't be too long standing out there you'll freeze."

"I don't like it," William said dropping the watch on the ground and stamping on it.

Daniel gasped as his most prized possession was so cold bloodidly destroyed.

"Well pick the bits up boy," William shouted, "they can't be left there littering the door step."

"Mother," he continued as Daniel grovelled on the door step trying to gather up the fragments of metal with his numb fingers, "the brat is very slow. Shall I liven him up a bit with the strap?"

"Well I'm sure he'd be improved by it William and his parents would no doubt be grateful for your help in training the lazy brute. But take him down to the bottom of the garden please. Your father's doing a surgery at the moment and he won't want to be disturbed by the little animals screams and put a warm coat on. It's beginning to snow now."

Daniel was left on the door step for a further five minutes or so before William reappeared wearing a thick wool lined anorak and carrying a vicious leather strap. William took hold of the naked boy by his ear and twisting it cruelly led him down to the end of the garden. He kicked Daniel's feet away from under him sending him tumbling face down onto the muddy ground which now had a thin covering of snow. Pinning the boy to the ground with a foot on the small of his back he began to thrash the child's bare bum.

It was fortunate that the garden was a long one because otherwise the crack of the strap striking Daniel's bare bum and his agonised screams would have inevitably disturbed the good Dr Smythe's consultation. As it was William was able to give the boy a long and painful taste of the belt with out causing any inconvenience to his parents.

"Well," he said at last, "let that be a lesson to you" and with a sharp kick in the boy's ribs he walked back to the warmth of the house leaving Daniel sobbing face down in the freezing mud.

Daniel did not spend long there for he remembered his mother's threats of what would be done to him if he was late. He got to his feet and ran as fast as he could back to Uncle Jack's farm house.

Arriving there he hesitated. After his experience at Dr Smythe's house he knew better than to present himself at the front door. Thus showing that charity boys are capable of learning if only they are beaten with sufficient severity. He found his way round to the back of the house but then hesitated. Should he knock at the door or not? If he knocked he might be beaten for disturbing whoever answered the door on the other hand his mother had promised him a beating if he returned late. In the end, plucking up courage he knocked timidly. Mrs Thomas answered the door. She grabbed him by the ear and twisting it dragged him into the house.

"Miss," she called up the stairs, still gripping Daniel painfully by the ear, "your brat's back and he's got a sore bum already."

"Well he's late and he must have annoyed one of his betters as well." Daniel's mother called down the stairs. "I'm changing now so I haven't got time to flog him. Would you do it for me Mrs Thomas. A good hard thrashing in the hope it'll get through to him. I want to be able to hear the brat's howls up here."

"Leave it to me Miss," Mrs Thomas called back cheerfully.

Mrs Thomas reached out and lifted from it's hook on the back of the kitchen door a short thick leather strap with a split end. Still holding Daniel firmly by his ear she raised the strap high up over her head and then brought it whistling down across the boy's naked bum. The sharp crack of leather striking bare flesh rang out like a pistol shot. The pain shot through Daniel's body momentarily driving the breath from his lungs. Then he screamed shrilly.

"Well done Mrs Thomas," Daniel's Mummy called down the stairs, "That's right let the little brute have it. Again and again Mrs Thomas brought the cruel strap hissing down as Daniel screamed and capered under it's impact and his loving Mummy shouted encouragement to Mrs Thomas. At last Mrs Thomas released her hold of Daniel's ear and for a moment he thought his beating was over but he soon found it was not. She transferred her grip from his ear to the top of his arm. She hurled him across the room towards the large kitchen table with it's scrubbed wooden top, helping him on his way with a sharp kick against his raw bum. The table caught Daniel across the top of his thighs and he sprawled own across it. Before he could right himself Mrs Thomas was on him once again. She pinned him to the table by the scruff of his neck while with her other hand she renewed her assault with the strap on his bare flesh. She continued in her attempt to flay the skin from his bum regardless of the boy's screams and pleas for mercy until Daniel's Mummy appeared at the kitchen door

"Is the brat bleeding yet?" she demanded.

Mrs Thomas paused to examine her handiwork.

"Not as much as I would like Ma'am," she replied regretfully, panting slightly for she was not a woman to spare herself when engaged on a really worthwhile important task like flogging a charity boy.

"Pity," Daniel's loving Mummy said, "still you can have another go at him later. Now I have to take him over to the Rectory for inspection by the trustees. "would you send my trap round to the front door please Mrs Thomas."

"Very good Ma'am," the housekeeper said dropping a courtesy.

"Come on you ungrateful lump of pig's shit," Daniel's Mummy said in her turn getting a grip of his ear and marching the sobbing boy out of the kitchen. On her way she administered a series of sharp slaps on his bruised bum to encourage him on his way.

The trap drew up outside the front door of the house just as they stepped out on the driveway. Daniel could see that it was drawn by the same pony boy that he had so soundly whipped the previous evening the livid marks of the lash clearly visible on his lean brown body.

Daniel's Mummy still holding him by the ear dragged him to the rear of the trap. There she unhitched a pair of fine steel manacles that were secured to the trap by a light chain. She clamped these so tightly round Daniel's thin wrists that the metal pressed into his skin. That task completed she looked down at her hand.

"You dirty thoughtless brute," she shouted clouting Daniel on the side of his head with her clenched fist knocking him to his knees, "you bled on my hand you lump of dog's shit. Get upon your feet and lick your filthy blood of my hand you ungrateful little tyke, and she kicked him hard on his skinned rump.

Daniel pulled himself to his feet as quickly as he could the thin metal bands about his wrists cutting into his flesh. Obediently he bent forward and licked his blood from his mother's hand. He should have realised what a thoughtless careless boy he was to have let it get there and felt very grateful for the opportunity of clean it off his caring Mummy. I fear he did not but then his training was only starting and he had much to learn.

Daniel's Mother jumped into the trap and with a sharp crack of the whip across the pony boy's bare shoulders she sent them off down the drive at a sharp trot.

The gravel cut into the soles of Daniel's feet for he was not used to running bare foot and with his hands fastened together in front of him and it was all he could do to keep up with the trap. Once or twice he stumbled but his mother whipped the pony boy on regardless and Daniel had to get himself back onto his feet as best he could. By the time they swung off the main road into the Rectory drive Daniel's shins and knees were bleeding profusely.

Daniel's Mother whipped the pony boy hard up to the front door of the Rectory and then brought him to a halt by hauling viciously on the reigns. The door was opened by the Rector's wife who must have seen her coming.

"How nice to see you," the Rector's wife called enthusiastically, "and you've brought another brat for the trustees to consider. You are most kind. Do come in and have a cup of coffee while you wait. I am afraid there are quite a few applicants here already and it'll be an hour or two before you will be seen. Your brat will be quite safe out herein the cold and wet the curate will see he doesn't get into any mischief."

She waived her hand towards the wall of the house where a row of naked boy's knelt on the gravel in front of which paced a heavily built young man wearing a cap and a thick black overcoat. The man was holding by it's toe a heavy walking shoe. As they watched he brought it cracking down on the top of the head of one of the kneeling brats.

"Did I say you could look up you runt," he demanded and he hit the child again. Blood streamed down the child's face and over it's bare chest.

"He's so good with the boy's," the Rector's wife said fondly. "Stand no nonsense at all and goes to infinite trouble to keep them in order. Do you know quite apart from his duties in the parish he gives up a great deal of his spare time to helping in the corrective establishment and they tell me he is really excellent there. Why only the other day Mrs Jones's twelve year old son who was there for only a week six months ago caught sight of him and started crying straight away. Just shows you doesn't it?"

"My brother Jack was speaking most highly of him at dinner yesterday."

"That's right. It's your brother whose promised him his gate boy to fuck isn't it. I am so glad. Easter is such a busy time for the clergy you know and buggering the boy will give him something to look forward to. I am sure he will wish to thank you himself but first of all can I have a look at this brat of yours?"

"By all means. Please do. He's my son Daniel. He seemed so promising at first but suddenly it became clear that he was no use for anything at all except service as a charity boy."

"So often the case. You know and when it happens the kindest thing for the brat is to face reality and let us take care of it. It will learn to be content with it's place in the world and will as the good Lord intended serve it's betters."

"Well a very nice looking little animal I must say. There'll be no problem getting this one past the trustees.

"Lift your hands up brat," the rectors wife ordered sharply. "I want to look at your cock."

Daniel hesitated and his Mummy punched him on the side of his head knocking him to his bleeding knees on the gravel path.

"Do as you're told you useless streak of cat's piss she shouted kicking him once again on his raw bottom.

Daniel scrambled to his feet and lifted his hands as he had been instructed.

"Oh good," the Rectors wife said, "he's not been cut. It's so much more satisfactory to have that job done as part of their initiation process. It reinforces the pain of the branding and is an outward sign of their inferior status that all can see including the brat himself. A constant reminder to him that he has been put into this world to serve his betters."

She lent forward and took hold of Daniel's foreskin between her finger and thumb pulling it roughly back. The boy squealed and she laughed grimly.

"It'll hurt a good deal more when I take the Stanley knife to it and hack it off," she told him grimly.

"Mind you," she continued speaking more mildly to Daniel's mother. "I don't know which hurts the little brutes more. Slicing the foreskin off or the disinfectant we slap on afterwards."

She laughed and dug her thumb nail into Daniel's foreskin giving him a foretaste of the agony to come.

Daniel howled as the rector's wife dug her thumbnail into his foreskin. She would no doubt have continued to torment him had her attention not been distracted by a two new arrivals. A tall man in a warm heavy overcoat and a lean shivering boy whose only clothing was a pair of shorts that he had so outgrown that the greater part of his rump was exposed. Numerous livid weals across the boy's deeply tanned skin showed where the cane and strap had been vigorously applied.

"Dear me," she said, "Mr Henry isn't it. It's some time since you've been with us and you have brought an applicant for a place as a charity boy. What's his name?"

"This useless lump of blubber," the man replied prodding the boy viciously in the ribs with his finger, "is David Jones. He's a lazy ungrateful little rat who despite all the efforts of his uncle and myself has failed to achieve any improvement in his attitude or behaviour. His uncle has therefore asked me to bring the filthy little pig here to see if the trustees will accept him as a charity boy. We think a period of really firm discipline is what turd needs."

As Mr Henry was speaking the Rector's wife was engaged in undoing the fastening at the top of the boy's shorts. She now gave them a sharp downwards pull and they tumbled down about the lad's ankles.

"Another uncut cock," she cried in delight. "I am so glad. Although," and she reached forward to pull the boy's foreskin brutally back, "filthy is an accurate description of the nasty little animal. Still we'll slice it off quick enough and then that particular problem in personal hygiene will be cured."

"Well there's no reason for the pair of you to be standing out here in the cold and rain. I'll just call he curate over to take charge of the brats and then do come inside and have some coffee."

"Father Matthew," she called imperiously.

The curate turned and hurried over to them smiling ingratiatingly.

"Yes dear Lady? Oh two new whelps for me to take charge of. Don't concern yourself I'll stand no nonsense with them. Come on don't stand there glancing about as if you're on holiday get over with the other livestock. Quick the two of you," and he hit both boys hard on their heads with the heel of the shoe that he was carrying, splitting their scalps and sending blood streaming down the side of their faces and down the brown skin of their bare chests and shoulders. Sobbing loudly the two boys ran to join the line of kneeling children.

The curate lingered for a moment.

"My dear Madam," he sad addressing Daniel's mother, "I would be most grateful if you would tell your brother how appreciative I am of his gift of his gate boy's bottom. I have often passed your drive and noticed the little lad there chained by his wrists to the gate. Really very appealing so very fragile and vulnerable and such an invitingly provocative rump. If I wasn't in holy orders and obedient to the ten commandments I would have found it difficult to resist the temptation to help myself. Please assure your brother I will handle the boy so roughly that he will never forget my buggering him."

"Mind you," he continued with a satisfied smile, "I'm so equipped that merely having me penetrate him will make him squeal like a stuck pig."

He bowed and hurried back to his charges.

"Knees right apart as far as they can go.," he shouted kicking at Daniel's legs till the kneeling boy's thighs were almost in a straight line one to another, "and get your bum down so it's touching the gravel. I want your balls resting on the ground. Come on quickly get in position… and you two," he continued turning his attention to David.

Daniel had no idea how long he was kept kneeling there, the gravel pressing into his raw knees the freezing rain flowing down over his naked body.

Get up quick you lazy idle lump of pigs shit," the curate shouted hitting him yet again across the top of his head with the heel of his shoe.

"Come on move. Don't you know better than to keep your betters waiting," the man yelled booting the boy up his bottom and sending him in a staggering run towards the front door of the Rectory.

"Do come on you stupid brute," Daniel's Mother shouted from the shelter of the porch Reaching out she grabbed him by the ear. Twisting it painfully she lead him in a half run across the hall. He was helped on his way by a hard slap across his bottom from the Rector's wife who happened to be passing.

He found himself in a large room facing a table behind which sat five people. He recognised his Uncle Jack among the men but he was most frightened by the sole woman. She was strongly built had dark gold curly hair and green eyes that regarded him with the cold unfeeling cruelty of a cat stalking it's pray.

"This miserable smear of cat's shit," Daniel's Mum said giving his ear a further vicious twist, "is my son and I would like to submit him to the trustees for admission as a charity boy."

"I have to declare an interest," Uncle Jack said, "I am the brats Uncle and I will stand down if you wish while this application is considered."

"No need of that at all Jack," the Rector, who was as acting as chairman said. "Just let go of the boy would you, dear lady."

"Now stand up straight quickly," he continued speaking much more brusquely when addressing Daniel. "Hands by your side boy. We want to have a proper look at you."

The Trustees stood up and came round the table and began to move slowly round Daniel. Fingers prodded his body pulled at his little prick and squeezed his balls.

"Who will test his bottom," the Rector enquired.

"I will," the woman said.

Daniel felt a hand placed on the back of his head forcing him lean forward.

"Feet apart," the woman's voice commanded from behind him. The order was reinforced with a sharp slap of an open hand across his bum. Daniel obeyed and fingers roughly pulled the cheeks of his bottom apart. He gave a gasp as a finger tip was pressed against the lips of his anus. The gasp turned into a squeak of pain and distress as the finger forced it's way passed his sphincter. Daniel whimpered as the finger probed deeper into his bottom but the pain was mixed with a peculiar feeling of excitement as it penetrated deeper into him. Despite himself he clenched tight about the finger his bottom muscles pumping as he tried to draw it further into himself. Mysteriously his prick hardened and sprang to attention.

"Nothing wrong with him in that department," one of the men remarked flicking the top of his cock painfully with his thumb nail. "Randy little whore."

"I could have told you he was all right. You should have seen the little tart playing with a couple of my boys," Uncle Jack commented in his usual cheery manner.

"Well let's test for plug size," the woman said.

Daniel moaned as he felt the tip of a second finger being forced into him. His moans had turned into full scale screams by the time a third finger had joined the first two. It felt as though the skin around his anus was being torn across.

"Size six I would say," the woman remarked withdrawing her fingers there's some work needed there."

A second later Daniel was screaming again as an expanding plug was secured in his bottom.

"The first induction ceremony isn't until Sunday," Daniel's mother said hesitantly. "I thought if you found him acceptable I might send him down to the trustees yard for initial preparation if there is room."

"The brat most certainly is acceptable," the Rector said cheerfully and I think time at the yard is an excellent idea. The brat is very fortunate to have such a considerate and caring Mother he must be very grateful to you."

"Boy," he continued, "you may embrace your mother and thank her for all her care."

Daniel turned to his mother and put his arms around her.

"Thank you Mummy for everything," he said through his sobs.

"It's much more than you deserve you nasty little insect," his mother said pushing him roughly away.

"Come here boy and lick my fingers clean," the green eyed woman commanded holding out a hand liberally stained with shit and some streaks of blood. It was the first time that Daniel had tasted his own shit.

End of Book One

Book Two
The Annual Pony Boy Race

What follows is less a story than an entertainment and it recounts a visit to the Vale by Mark Legge to his stay with his old friend Mister Jack Wardle of Dingle Hall on the weekend of the Annual Pony Boy Race.

Chapter 1

Mark Legg gazed resignedly out at the country as it slowly unfolded on either side of the passing train. It was not very pleasant to look at, great fields of corn, unbroken by trees or hedgerows, relieved only by the occasional patch of 'set-aside land', covered by brambles and poisonous yellow ragwort. No birds or animals were to be seen to relieve the monotony of the scene, just corn and scrub stretching away into the distance. Every now and again a bunch of box like modern houses would erupt incongruously in the middle of this debased countryside. Without churches or shops these clumps of dwellings were not villages or towns just places where people slept between days of urban toil.

If it were not for the very fat woman pressing up against his arm to his right and the ear splitting noise being made by a transistor thumping out hard rock operated by four rather drunk young men at the end of the carriage Mark would have read his newspaper. However the Times being a broad sheet was difficult to read in a confined space, and no space was more confined, he reflected than the one into which he was currently crammed. Anyway concentration, or indeed thought of any kind, was rendered impossible by the noise of the ghetto blaster.

Eyhorne Street, Harrietsham, Lenham, Charring, the train stopped at each deserted semi-derelect station, with their litter strewn platforms, locked waiting rooms, vandalised lavatories and weed filled flower beds. Next stop was his, Westwell Leacon. The train would be almost four hours late but at least he knew there would be no question of having missed his connection. There was only one train a day between the evening and morning rush hours down the single track branch line to Muggleton and it would have been held back for the connection. Unlike the rest of England trains and indeed all other services connected with that place, were operated with the convenience of the public as first priority.

The train seemed for a moment to have picked up a previously quite unsuspected turn of speed. Through the dirt encrusted window partially further obscured by the carriage's "no smoking" sign, Mark saw the Westwell Leacon station sign flash past. He started to his feet. The train driver had stopped many times in the course of the journey when he should not have. Was it possible that, driven by some weird existential logic, he should now feel obliged not to stop when the timetable required that he should? If it had been the train-driver's intention to ignore the station, and who can fathom the workings of the mind of a Connex employee, he changed his mind as soon as Mark was on his feet. Slamming the brakes on he brought the train to a halt throwing Mark hard against the fat woman. Apologising Mark extricated himself from her arms and began to make his way along the central aisle of the carriage towards the doors. Shuffling through the detritus of empty, plastic coke bottles, lager cans, crisp and cigarette packets that littered the floor, his case bumping against his own legs and those of those passengers to be unfortunate to be seated on either side of the aisle, he eventually reached the end of the carriage. He pressed the button to open the sliding doors that would release him onto the platform. Nothing happened.

One of the youths, a large very black one with an Afro hair do, with the ghetto blaster stood up.

"Fucking safety feature," he shouted over the heavy beat of the music. There was a sharp click and a ten-inch [25cm] blade glinted in his hand. Inserting it between the two doors he prized them apart. One of his friends equally large but somewhat paler in colour got his fingers in the gap between the two doors and with some difficulty forced them further open.

"I'd fucking get out now if you want to dude," the first youth said, "he can't hold the thing for fucking ever."

Muttering his thanks Mark wriggled out through the narrow opening thus created and down onto the platform. The doors closed with a solid thud behind him. He turned to wave his thanks to the two youths but they had already returned to their seats.

The train having stopped showed no signs off starting again. It just stood there its diesel engine turning over noisily, its passengers cooking slowly in the heat. The platform was deserted. There was no shade. The sun beat fiercely down and its heat reflected off the asphalt was magnified many times. No one else got on or off the train. There was no announcement over the loud speakers.

Mark had not expected one. Muggleton was a very private sort of place. It had its own way of doing things that its inhabitants tended to think was better than other peoples' but it didn't impose its ideas on others and it expected that courtesy to be reciprocated. It wasn't exactly that it kept itself to itself, indeed Mark knew from his own experience how hospitable and welcoming Muggletonian's could be to those who sympathised with their ideas. It was just that it didn't push itself forward. It did not advertise itself.

In conformity with this attitude the train for Muggleton stood waiting, tucked inconspicuously away beside a neatly painted-waiting room and shaded by a stand of massive oak trees. A small steam engine, coupled to a single carriage both spotlessly clean and painted in the colours of the old lner company, puffed quietly away. The carriage was not a featureless mass produced metal tube of the sort in which Mark had recently been imprisoned but a carefully crafted object with luxuriously upholstered individual compartments each with its own door and a corridor. All the doors now stood open the sunlight, filtering through the thick canopy of oak leaves, glinting on their highly polished brass handles, so that they could be cooled and aired by the gentle breeze.

Mark climbed into an empty compartment pulling the door with figure "1" painted on its outside closed behind him with a satisfyingly solid clunk. He lifted his case onto the luggage rack thinking as he did so that it was the last time that he would have to handle it this side of his visit to his old school friend Jack Wardle. He sank down onto the thickly upholstered window seat facing the engine and leaning forward pulled on the thick leather strap that controlled the compartment's window causing it to drop down into the door. He had seen no sign of the engine driver or fireman but he was confident that now the connection had arrived it would not be long before the train departed.

He flipped down the thick armrest to his right and, unfolding his newspaper, buried himself in his Times. He was un-surprised to note that the Prime Minister's announcement, slipped into a press release detailing a reshuffling of sub-cabinet ministerial posts, that the monarchy was abolished and would be replaced with an elected presidency when the details had been worked out came in for some adverse editorial comment. The Times, it appeared, was not impressed by the suggestion by a Downing Street source that the country could chug along perfectly well for a year or two without a head of state or, if that proved not to be so, some interim temporary arrangement could be made. After all the country was managing perfectly well already with an interim head of the judiciary and an interim second chamber so why not an interim head of state? Everything anyway would be worked out in due course by a small committee of eminent individuals all of whom happened at one time or another to have shared a flat with the Prime Minister.

Mark had hardly got halfway through the editorial questioning the wisdom of this approach when there was a slamming of doors, a blast on a whistle and, with a discrete toot on it's whistle fully in accord with the restrained way that Muggletonians conducted themselves during their contacts with the outside world, the train began to move out of the station. At first the track ran through the same sort of debased and sterile countryside as before. Then with a considerably louder and more assertive whistle than before the train was suddenly plunged into brief total darkness before the electric lights flickered on as it entered the long Westwell Leacon Branch Line Tunnel. Mark, who had been expecting it, grabbed the leather strap and yanked the window closed so that no smuts and smoke could get into the compartment.

The carriage was filled with a low yellow light quite unsuitable to read by. Mark could have reached up and switched on the individual reading lamp set over his seat. Instead he settled back and, as the smoke and steam dimly illuminated by the light from the carriage swirled past the window, gave himself up to thought.

He had always enjoyed his visits to stay with Jack Wardle from way back when they were both boys together and he was commonly invited to spend part of his summer holidays at the old family home. This times though the visit seemed to promise to be something special. First of all it was the weekend of the Muggleton Race meeting, always a time of high excitement and pleasure. Then it was clear from Jack's letters that he thought that he had a very good team and driver for the Baron Corvo Challenge Cup. The last time a team out of the Dingly Dell stable had won the cup had been in Jack's grandfather's time. There would be great celebrations indeed if the cup could at last grace again the mantle piece in the dining room of the great house.

Then there was Daniel, Jack's young nephew now just ten years old. Mark knew what great hopes his friend had placed in that young animal. After his own wife had died in childbirth Jack had seen his younger brother's son as the way to preserve the family name and ownership of the Dingley Dell estate. He himself had had his doubts about the boy as he had about his father. He remembered Tom from his own visits to the place as a boy. A couple of years younger than Jack and himself he had always felt there was something odd about him even then. He couldn't put his finger on it but an uncertainty, a lack of confidence, a weakness perhaps of spirit. He had thought he had noticed the same flaw in Daniel and had tried tactfully to warn Jack but had been he thought ignored.

For a time all had gone well. In Jack's eyes his nephew could do no wrong but then, when he was brought to the village, the baseness of the boy's nature became apparent. Mark could tell from his friend's letters how hard a blow this was to him. All at once all the hopes he had invested in the child were betrayed. But Jack did not show his disappointment. He did not hesitate but simply acted in the only way possible for a man of his integrity. Daniel lacked moral fibre. He would pollute others if action was not taken. Jack could easily simply have sent the boy away from Dingley Dell, back to the outer world which had already become so degenerate and corrupt that Daniel's presence would hardly make it any worse. But that would have been a renouncement of responsibility and Jack never evaded his responsibilities and did not intend to do so on this occasion. Despite his deep disappointment at his betrayal by the boy he applied to the trustees to have his nephew admitted as a charity boy.

Even then he did not consider his work done. As he wrote to Mark, "Daniel is my family's problem and it is up to me to deal with it. If my Father had faced up to my younger brother's inadequacies and taken the appropriate action then none of this would have happened. I do not intend to repeat my father's mistake." He kept Daniel in his own household, not now as a probable inheritor of the family estate, but as a mere charity boy. He devoted a great deal of time and energy to toughening the brat up physically so that he could do a full and proper days work. At the same time he worked hard to instil in the boy the habits of unquestioning obedience and willing acceptance of his servitude working at the same time to make him appreciate the deep debt of gratitude he owed for being allowed, unworthy though he was, the opportunity to serve his betters.

Mark could tell from his letters that Jack found all this a trouble. Passing references to his right arm being tired from beating the boy or of his rest being disturbed by the child's howls as either his mother, who had generously agreed to stay on at the big house to help with the schooling of her son, or Mrs Thomas his excellent house keeper, tried to thrash some sense into the little tyke, attested to this. Indeed his letters were full of praise for the commitment that Jean, Daniel's mother showed in forwarding the process of bringing her son to heel. A commitment that contrasted painfully to the disinterest, amounting almost to open hostility, in the process shown by the boy's father who remained working for some worthy but ineffective nga in the Far East, his only contribution the occasional carping letter.

"Bad blood Mark," Jack had said in one of his letters, "and what makes it worse it is our family's blood. When I think what poor Jean has to put up with from both her husband and her son and when I reflect that if my Father had but done his duty when Tom's inadequacies were all too clear as a boy she would have been spared all this, I am consumed with guilt." "I wish Mark," he had written on another occasion, "that you could have been here this morning when the excellent Mrs Thomas dragged Daniel into the dining room by his ear and announced that she had discovered the miserable little brute thieving a slice of burnt toast from the kitchen swill bin. Jean had nothing to hand with which to hit the thieving little turd but that did not stop her. Quick as a flash she had pulled off one of her shoes and began beating him about the head and shoulders with its heel. His scalp was soon torn but neither the blood nor the brat's screams could deflect her from her duty. She is a wonderful woman with a real knack in handling charity scum. What a pity she is wasted on that useless fellow my brother."

More recently a rather more optimistic note had appeared in Jack's letters. "There is after all only one final outcome possible in a struggle between a member of the community and even the stubbiest of charity boys and as the old saying goes the longer it takes to break a brat the more total its final submission is." One recent letter even suggested that the boy's behaviour and attitude had sufficiently improved for Jack to be considering giving him as a gift to a young protege of his, William Smythe, the thirteen year old son of the village Doctor. William, Jack remarked was a tough little fellow that would stand no nonsense and would appreciate having a charity boy of his own to keep up to scratch. They would be good for each other, William would have the opportunity of working and disciplining a brat while Daniel would benefit from having a young energetic master who would no doubt adopt a hands on approach to disciplinary matters.

Mark looked forward to seeing how Daniel had made out as a charity boy. He had seen the boy about the place from time to time during his visits to the big house and although he had thought him an attractive enough little thing in his school uniform shorts and grey flannel shirt he had always felt that the child would look much better as a charity brat. Mark secretly imagined the child stripped naked or dressed in the single meagre garment allowed a charity boy, his skin burnt nut brown from constant exposure to the sun and wind, the few excess ounces he carried stripped from him by hunger and hard work, his taught young body bearing the inevitable marks of a recent beating. Shortly he was going to see whether the reality was as attractive as he had imagined.

He wondered if Jack was keeping the boy naked or allowing him some vestigial clothing. He knew that early on Daniel was denied all clothing for Jack had mentioned the boy's initial reluctance to show himself naked in the village. Jack dealt with this in short order but had clearly been more amused than angered by the child's reluctance. The idea of anyone taking any notice of anything as commonplace and normal as a naked charity boy running around the village was laughable and after all the brat would have to endure many greater and more painful humiliations in its existence. Of one thing Mark was sure, if the little brute was allowed any clothing it would be minimal. Jack was not the sort of man to waste money on clothing pauper boys and he was too generous and considerate a man to needlessly deprive his neighbours of the pleasure to be had from seeing a pretty young slut about the place.

Mark remembered Daniel's nicely rounded bottom with the dimples on either side clearly visible beneath the tightly fitting grey flannel shorts. Those dimples would be more pronounced now as the boy had been toughened up and lost weight and seared into the deeply tanned flesh just below the top of the child's left hip would be the Trust's CB brand. Had the brat been fucked yet? He was ten years old so if he had not the moment, the third climactic as it was often called in a pauper boy's life, circumcision, branding, penetration, could not be long delayed.

With a hoot and a roar the train emerged from the long tunnel. Sun light flooded the compartment and Mark abandoning his reverie sat gazing out of the window awaiting the trains arrival at Muggleton Station with a sense of excited anticipation.

The railway track now ran down the side of a wide valley. To left and right the South Downs rose, their grass covered slopes dotted with white sheep. Beside the track the valley floor was divided by high hedgerows, where dog rose and honey suckle bloomed, into a patchwork of small fields. There was none of the sterile uniformity that had debased the country earlier. This was a living and various landscape. Hay meadows, where the breeze sent ripples of movement through the tall grass, stood side by side with pasture land, where black and white Friesian cows grazed quietly, and corn fields. Even these latter were not uniform. Mark could see fields of barley, oats, wheat, even potatoes and other vegetables, flash by the carriage windows as the train trundled steadily forwards. There were frequent little woods and coppices while every farmhouse seemed to have a small orchard growing near by.

In the middle distance the Dingle river, a sheet of polished silver under the blazing sun, ran through water meadows golden with buttercups and celandine. Beyond this the patchwork of small fields and woods resumed until the land rose sharply again on the far side of the valley.

A couple of rabbits disturbed by the passing train scuttled across a freshly mown hay field, a fox skulked along a hedgerow, swallows wheeled and darted overhead. A herds boy trudging bare footed after his charges, a pair of ragged shorts his only clothing, turned to salute the passing train and it's passengers. He dropped to his knees in the mire and pressed his head to the ground, as the rules required. Then, springing to his feet, he waived vigorously in a spontaneous gesture of welcome, white teeth flashing in his dark face as he grinned. Words, Mark reflected, could not more clearly express both the brat's submission to the system that governed his existence and his unquestioning acceptance of his roll in it.

The train rolled on. A gang of near naked field boys, all hefty young animals fifteen or sixteen years old, were raking and turning freshly cut hay by hand under the blazing sun. Watching them, whip in hand was a slight young boy, probably the farmer's son, no more than eight years old. The boy stood there, his straw hat perched nonchalantly on his head, confident in his ability to control eight brutes each one of which was individually bigger and stronger than he was. Even as Mark watched the boy sensed some failure or lack of effort from one of the gang. Mark could not hear the crack of the whip or the scream of the boy across whose shoulders it scored a livid weal but he saw the youth leap under the bight of the lash and bend with renewed energy to his task. No doubt he and his fellows would need and get a great deal more encouragement of a similar nature before their daily sixteen hours of hard labour drew to an end.

How well thought Mark had the arrangements made in the mid fifteenth century by that philanthropic wool stapler and alderman John Hiram lasted and how well had they served successive generations rich and poor alike of the inhabitants of the Dingle Valley. Mark knew Hiram's original bequest, prompted it was believed by an incident when a pauper boy refused alms threw a lump of horse shit at the good man, was of five pounds. The income from this was to be used to clear the streets of Muggleton of all "idle vicious or unwanted boys and to bind them to the service of worthy masters so that they could spend their time in useful labour and learn the virtues of obedience and humility." He adjured the trustees of the fund to be frugal in the provision of maintenance for the pauper boys for it was right and necessary that they should be early inured to hardship and not to spare the rod when correcting their manifold faults. The consequences of this foundation were found so useful and beneficial to the community that over the following two hundred years many of the more affluent inhabitants left further sums to the trustees of John Hiram's foundation considerably increasing that worthy's original bequest.

At first the trustees confined their activities, as perhaps John Hiram had intended, to the children of the indigent poor. Thus the custom, that persisted to the current day, of referring to boys in their care indiscriminately as charity or pauper boys. It was only in the early seventeenth century that the full potential benefits of the charity were recognised. A solicitor practising in Muggleton consoled himself for the death of his first wife by marrying a local landowner's daughter. He cast around for a way of ridding himself of the inconvenient existence of a child from the first marriage, being prevented from simply having the young boy strangled by an unusually tender conscience for one of his profession. In preparing an indenture transferring ownership of a of a coffle six nine year old pauper brats to a merchant in the Turkey trade, who thought he saw a chance of disposing them profitably in the Levant where there was and indeed still is, a strong demand for pretty blond boys, he stumbled across the original wording of old John Hiram's bequest.

He immediately presented his weeping son for acceptance by the trustees. He argued that, while admittedly the brat was not a pauper nor indeed so far as he was aware more than usually idle and vicious for a boy of his age, he was most certainly unwanted. The trustees immediately saw the force and convenience of his argument (the boy was a remarkably pretty one). They accepted responsibility for the brat and ordered that his name should be added to the indenture that was at that moment lying on his father's desk still awaiting completion.

In this way the solicitor was freed of an embarrassment, the Turkey merchant turned a tidy profit and a precedent was set that was enthusiastically followed over the following centuries. To such an extent indeed that by mid-nineteenth century the parish roles suggest that 87% of boys resident in the Vale of Dingle between the ages of eight and sixteen were charity boys. In the end John Hiram had achieved in his native town, Mark reflected, what modern governments have totally failed to deliver nationally with all their expensive paraphernalia of child benefit which is not paid, schools that fail to teach, parenting orders that are ignored, police who do not act and courts which do not convict. He had helped parents with the cost and trouble of rearing children, he had created a society where juvenile hooliganism was unknown, he had imposed order and purpose where otherwise there would have been simply self-destructive chaos.

The few glimpses of life in the Vale of Dingle that his train journey had provided showed that the system was destined to endure. The little herds boy signalling his willing submission, the small farmer's son so confident in his authority and the gang of docile young field hands labouring under his direction all showed that this was so.

Just as Mark reached this comforting conclusion there was a grinding of brakes accompanied by a loud hissing signalling that the train was drawing into Muggleton Station. The carriage trundled slowly forwards, past the Stationmaster's immaculate vegetable garden with cabbages, carrots, beetroot and other vegetables all neatly ranked and a small naked pauper boy assiduously hoeing between the rows of lettuces. The brat's zeal was no doubt partly accounted for by the presence on the station platform nearby of the station master himself resplendent in his navy blue uniform and peaked cap heavy with silver braid. As the child bent to his task Mark noticed a couple of fresh bruises on his bottom that suggested he had already that day been given a taste of the man's belt. It rolled slowly on past a small flower garden where with chrysanthemums, flox, sweet peas, dahlias, irises jostled each other for space.

The instant the train came to a halt at the platform, still wet from it's most recent scrubbing, the door to Marks compartment was pulled open. Rising from his seat Mark saw a pretty little twelve-year-old urchin holding the door open for him. The boy wore a small pillbox hat set jauntily on one side of his head on top of a mass of dark curls and a tight little shell jacket both in yellow and brown colours of the old lner and nothing else. Unless that is you included under the heading of clothing the thin band of metal encircling the base of the child's tiny prick and tight hairless ball sack forcing his genitalia away from his body in a way that almost invited an exploring hand. As Mark stepped down onto the platform the brat gave respectfully at the knees turning his left thigh outwards and with his open palm briefly brushing against the black outline of a rampant man's cock tattooed on its inside at its very top.

Mark knew that this sign meant that the boy's body was available to be used by any man who was prepared to pay, the no doubt very moderate fee, set by the station master for his use. A matter of a few pence no more. As usual what determined the price of an asset or service was supply and demand and while demand for the services offered by the slut was no doubt high the number of good quality brats available would keep their price depressed. Having said that the boy was a pretty little animal and Mark might well in other circumstances have raised the question of his price with the stationmaster who was standing by the gate to the station yard. But even at that moment Mark caught sight of Jack setting a spanking pace as he drove up the village high street in a stylish open two wheeler drawn by a well matched pair high stepping of pony boys with a smaller running boy keeping a steady two feet [60cm] behind it.

Mark, as he stepped out onto the platform, briefly squeezed the child's balls. The little whore straightened himself pushing his pelvis forwards. Mark walked on with a smile. Forbidden to speak unless spoken to charity brats nevertheless generally managed to get certain simple messages across to their betters.

The stationmaster was waiting to apologise to Mark for the late arrival of his train and to welcome him on behalf of the railway company to Muggleton. The functionary made no reference while doing so to the possession or otherwise of a ticket. To have done so after all would have been to commit the social solecism of implying that Mark was the sort of person who might travel without one.

These courtesies completed the official excused himself on the grounds that he needed to ginger up the gang of pauper boys charged with unloading the goods van. The crack of leather striking bare flesh and the squeals of pain coming from the far end of the platform following his departure suggested that he performed this task with exemplary vigour and enthusiasm.

The stationer master gone Mark stood alone in the shade of the ticket office admiring Jack's rig as it approached. This was not some old buggy taken out of the barn on market day by a local farmer with two of his sturdiest boys taken straight from the fields and clapped between the shafts to draw it. The carriage was a thing of beauty, light and elegant, it's black and gold paintwork pristine and gleaming. The two pony boys drawing it looked bred for the task. Their oiled and burnished bodies glistened with health, their feet pounding the road in perfect timing as they ran, lifting their knees just as high after covering six miles [10km] at a cracking pace in the heat of the day as when they set out.

Such precision, discipline and endurance were not easily or quickly inculcated. Behind these two fourteen year olds now drawing their master so smartly up the little town's main street lay some seven or eight years of patient schooling. Jack and his fellow trainers were always scanning the fresh drafts of charity boys for little brats with the potential to grow into strong well-made beasts with long legs and good chests. The problem was to judge how a skinny seven-year-old colt would look in five years time when he could be expected to be put between the shafts for the very first time for a novice chase or similar race. Jack said he looked at such indications as the size of the feet and hands, the way the shoulders were set to the trunk and surprisingly into the child's eyes to judge its courage and willingness to give all for its master. The task of selecting likely colts for training was further complicated by the fact that in prestige terms being the parent of one of a pair of champion pony boys ranked only second to owning a pair of such boys. As a consequence the training yards were always having visits from mothers hawking what they fondly imagined were likely brats from one establishment to another in an endeavour 'to do their best' for their little darlings.

However a colt was selected and from whatever source he came the signing of his indenture papers and the acceptance of the consideration by his parents marked the beginning of a long and arduous program of preparation and training.

Pony boy racing had a long history in the Vale of Dingle. The earliest historical record being a mention in the will of a wool chandler in 1543 leaving to "my brother Thomas my hunting dog and my two trotting boyes and my chariotte". However, as with many other sports, a set of rules governing its conduct was only drawn up in the mid-nineteenth century with the creation of the sports governing body "The Muggleton Boy Trotting Club" with, incidentally, Jack Wardle's great great grandfather as it's first chairman. The club undertook such important tasks such as standardising the specifications of the racing traps though these were substantially revised over the years as new and lighter materials became available for their construction allowing more arduous courses to be set and faster times achieved. They also prescribed the somewhat stylised running style required from the boys, knees being raised high and the feet being then driven hard downwards and required that racing pairs should be trained to match each others stride, inner and then outer feet hitting the ground consecutively.

The club also made explicit what had been from very early years in the history of the sport an important but unstated requirement for its development; that the trotting boys should experience the world in much the same way as their equine equivalents. The minutes show that initially a proposal to seize all babies of paupers immediately after birth and to bring them up as animals was considered. This was not pursued partly because human babies, to use an agricultural term, are not 'good goers', that is they take a considerable time to wean and so on. Further it was pointed out that to confine the selection of trotting boys to the children of the indigent classes would lead to the loss of some very high quality stock.

In the end the committee confined itself to stating certain conditions that a boy had to satisfy before he could be registered as racing stock. The most important being that he should be put into training no later than the end of his eighth year and that at the time his parents signed his indentures his eardrums should be punctured and the tip of his tongue removed though a later alternative to the latter was the cutting of the bat's focal chords. After this was done a pony boy could only express himself in grunts and squeals and he could not understand what was said about him although it was thought that he might be able to hear sufficiently to pick up something from the tone of voice used just as dogs or indeed horses do.

Jack spotting Mark waiting for him rose in the trap and waived before urging the pony boys on with vicious lashes of the whip across their bare shoulders. The trap swung into the yard the harness jingling, the pony boys' feet pounding the ground. Jack yelled and hauling hard on the reigns brought the trap to a sharp halt. The pony boy's stood still, their chests heaving as they fought for air, their bodies slicked with sweat. Mark could see from the livid welts that marked the deeply tanned skin of their shoulders and flanks that they had been driven hard.

"How are you?" Jack called out leaping down from the trap and then as the two pony boys tried to move towards the water trough beside the hitch rail quickly turning and grabbing the nearest brat by the bridle, "no you bloody don't."

A sound, half moan, half whimper came from the two boys as they were forced back from the trough. Despite being deprived of the power of speech their distress at being deprived of the chance of slaking their thirst was clear.

"They'll only try to drink the trough dry," Jack explained laughing. He hauled the boys back and secured the pair to the hitch rail on a short reign, "and get so bloated that they can't manage more than a slow trot on the way home or they'll foul the road and upset people."

It was typical of Jack's responsible and kindly nature that he should be concerned about the effect his brats could have on others.

"And you, you lazy lump of dog shit," he shouted fiercely turning his attention to the running boy who hands on his knees stood panting from his recent exertions, "do something for once to justify all the trouble you and your mother have taken with you, you ungrateful pig. Get Mr Mark's case out of the train. Quick now."

"Mark," he continued returning to his normal friendly easy tone of voice, "get your boot up the bum of that useless scum bag when he passes you. Perhaps that will induce some sense of urgency in the little brute."

Mark obligingly swung round, his foot raised, and looked at the boy properly for the first time, for up to then his attention had been concentrated on his old friend Jack and the two pony boys. He saw it was Daniel, but a very different Daniel from the rather reserved and self-conscious little schoolboy he had met on previous occasions. It was Daniel as he had sometimes imagined him in his fantasies, stripped of his clothes, a lither thinner boy, his body tanned a deep golden brown by the sun and wind, a deep purple bruise across the front of one firm young thigh showing that he was subjected to the same discipline as every other pauper brat. Mark had always thought that the boy would make an attractive charity boy and he was glad to see that opinion born out in practice.

He had just time enough to take in Daniel's transformation and to notice the scrap of blue ribbon tied round the base of the child's tiny hairless balls, a sign that the boy had not yet been penetrated, before the boy darted past him. Mark lashed out with his foot and with perfect timing caught the brat full in the rump with such force that he was lifted bodily into the air. The boy squealed and loosing his balance crashed down on the platform on his knees. His upraised bottom presented a perfect target as he scrabbled on his hands and knees to regain his feet. His blood raised, Mark started forward to take full advantage of the opportunity but the brat was too quick for him, scuttling away out of range.

The heat struck Mark like a blast of hot air from a furnace as he stepped out of the shade. The asphalt surface of the station yard had begun to bubble and melt in the sun. He walked slowly; no sensible person would do anything quickly in such heat, to where Jack was standing. The pony boys shifted uneasily their harnesses jangling, obviously bothered by the flies that were beginning to swarm about them. With their hands shackled to the trap shafts they shook their heads, wriggled their shoulders and twitched their bottoms in a vain effort to keep the creatures from settling on them. The flies were thickest round their eyes and on their backs and shoulders swarming where the whip had broken the skin or on their legs where blood welled darkly from bramble torn flesh.

"Sorry I wasn't in time to meet the train," Jack said straightening from examining a long gash down the side of one of the boy's legs. "The station master telephoned me to say it was delayed but he was just a little over pessimistic in his forecast of its probable arrival time."

"That's all right Jack the train had only just got in."

"I suppose I could have brought the car and I would have been on time but then I thought you'd enjoy the ride up to the house in the trap better in this weather. Nothing pleasanter on a hot summer's day than being drawn at a smart trot by a pair of pony boys along our lanes in an open trap."

"A well matched pair too," Mark remarked.

"Pretty good, pretty good," Jack replied complacently, "torn their legs a bit though. Took the short cut through the eighty acre wood and the brambles hadn't been cut right back on the footpath. Nothing that some wound powder won't put right though."

"You must be hungry and thirsty though. What about a couple of pints and a ham salad or something at the Duke opposite?"

"The beer sounds fine. I don't think I can eat anything though in this heat."

"You'll feel different after a pint of Black Sheep Bitter," Jack said confidently

"God the flies are bad," he added absent-mindedly brushing a horse fly from the side of the nearest pony boy's rump. "Come on lets go before they start on us."

"You," he yelled at Daniel, who was struggling to get Mark's case out of the compartment, "get a move on you lazy little tyke. This isn't a holiday camp you know. Get that case over to the ticket office. We're going over to the Duke and I want you there too NOW."

Chapter 2

"I'll get young William Smythe to come down for the case," Jack remarked as they walked. "He's sure to up at the stable yard when we get back. He spends all his spare time there when he's out of school and he'll enjoy the chance to drive to take out a trap by himself."

"A fine young lad, Doctor Smythe's eldest son, the best sort of boy. Seems to know by instinct how to handle the charity scum we're afflicted with. I had hoped…" He checked himself and shrugged.

"Well here we are at the Duke let's go inside and get our beers. Where's that useless brute. Oh here you are and about time to. Well open the door for us boy and we can all go in."

The two men closely followed by the naked boy, still panting and sweating slightly from his exertions, walked into the Duke.

The Duke although it called itself an hotel was primarily a public house which, more as a sideline than anything else, let out rooms. It was the most superior of the sixteen public houses that together laboured to assuage the thirsts of Muggleton's adult inhabitants. It was here that the more considerable farmers of the area met at lunchtime on market days to drink and to forecast their imminent financial ruin. It was here that the social elite of Muggleton, the doctor, the solicitor, the accountant, the headmaster, Inspector of Taxes, the Inspector of Police, the more prosperous shop keepers and so on, met in the evenings in the front bar to gossip about each other and get discretely drunk.

The lay out of the place made little concession to its status as an hotel. You entered the building from the street and found yourself in a hall that smelt in equal parts of beer and cooking whose walls may once have been painted a specific colour but had now through the passage of years and the smoke of countless cigarettes become a dingy nondescript yellow. There was no reception desk but there was a hand written notice cellotaped to the wall next to a bell push saying, "please ring for attention". In front of you a set of stairs covered in threadbare carpeting rose uninvitingly upwards. To the right was a door with small glass panels and a brass label reading "saloon" which was known commonly as the front bar. To the left a similar door bore the label "bar" which in its turn was usually referred to as the back bar although in fact it was no more in the back of the building than its socially more pretentious rival.

It was to the front bar that Jack led the way. It neither being market day or the evening the room was deserted. Jack strode across to the bar and rapped on it. There was a flutter of activity in the nether regions of the hotel and eventually a rather plump middle aged lady appeared. Catching sight of Jack her face broke into a smile.

"Why Mr Wardle," she said, "how nice to see you. What can we do for you today."

"Two pints of bitter Gwen as quick as you can for we're both parched with thirst and what can you do us for lunch."

"Well," the bar maid said as she drew the pints, "we have faggots and mushy peas, bangers and chips, roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, blue grass Thai Curry, that's very popular that is, and the chef likes it cos it comes in a packet and he just has to put it into the micro-wave……"

"Those sound all very nice Gwen but perhaps a bit heavy for lunch on a day as hot as this. Do you have any salads?"

"Salads," the idea was clearly a rather unorthodox if not revolutionary one; "well I'm not sure Sir. I'll have to ask the chef. I'll just finish drawing this pint and I'll go and see."

"Chef says," Gwen announced on her return, "that as its you Mr Wardle he can do either a ham salad or a very nice cold salmon one though he doesn't usually do salads on Friday and they're with chips or baked potatoes."

"Well cold salmon salad and a baked potato Gwen thank you. And you Mark?"

"The same please."

"Good I'll settle up now and if you give me a shout when they're ready I'll send the brat up for them. Mark the table by the window I think. I'll be along in a moment."

"That's better," Jack said a few minutes later after taking a long swig at his beer, leaning back in his chair and stretching his legs out luxuriously. I could have done with that and no doubt you could even more so Mark after that train journey of yours."

"Good beer and very welcome," Mark replied wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. It did occur to him that Daniel, who was hovering nervously behind Jack's chair, having run the six miles [10km] from Dingley Dell to Muggleton in the heat of the day was probably more thirsty than either of them but he of course didn't count being only a charity boy.

"And what," asked Jack suddenly reaching back and grabbing Daniel by his arm just above the elbow, "do you think of this little rat."

He pulled the boy roughly forward his fingers and thumb pressing deep into the flesh of the brat's thin arm.

"For God's sake stand up straight you ghastly little scumbag so Mister Mark can get a proper look at your miserable carcass," he ordered roughly releasing his hold of the boy's arm and leaving the naked child standing between the two men.

Mark noticed bruising beginning to develop where his friend's hand had gripped the boy's upper arm. He also saw that both Daniel's knees had been skinned when he had fallen on the platform and blood was oozing from the grazes and trickling down the front of his shins. However blood and bruises, in moderation at least, did not in Mark's opinion detract from the attractiveness of a young boy.

"He looks better as a charity boy," Mark remarked leaning forward and running his hand along the side of one bare thigh feeling the boy's skin cool and silken smooth to his touch. He thought he discerned a slight tremor in the boy. He wondered what Daniel felt being obliged to submit himself quietly to their inspection and handling. Then he noticed a slight stirring in the child's tiny prick. It was very slight but the thing was undoubtedly showing signs of swelling and hardening. The slut, Mark realised with a feeling of contempt, found it exciting.

"That's because he always was one," Jack said carrying Mark's unspoken thoughts to their logical conclusion. "Mind you we had a struggle to get him this far though we were working with the grain. When I think of the amount of time his mother and Mrs Thomas and I have had to spend over the last few months thrashing the conceit out of the little brute I am appalled. Looking back at times it seems to me I spelt all my waking hours slicing his bum to bits with the cane. Still it seems to be coming together now though and I hope the brat is grateful…are you turd?"

"Oh yes Uncle Jack Sir," Daniel said earnestly beginning one of those exercises in complex self abnegation that pauper boys performed whenever the opportunity was offered them. Mark was uncertain whether they did so because they believed and meant the sentiments they were expressing or simply in order to curry favour with their betters. "I will always be grateful to you Sir and my loving Mummy and good Mrs Thomas for all the time and trouble you all spent beating a proper sense of my own inferiority and worthlessness into my useless hide and I hope Sir you and Mummy and Mrs Thomas and Mr Mark Sir will flog me again whenever I do anything wrong so that I can learn quickly how to become………."

The brat ran on and on. Mark stopped listening and turned his attention back to his examination of the boy's body running his hand up the inside of one thigh he rolled the Daniel's tiny balls between his finger and thumb before turning his attention to the child's small but increasingly tumescent prick. Daniel had like all charity boys had had his foreskin removed during the induction process. Mark initially thought, turning the brat's cock between his fingers, that, as usual, they had made quite a neat job of it. Then lifting it he saw that the foreskin had not been cut square at the back. Perhaps the knife had slipped or the brat had suddenly managed to break loose of the hands holding him down but a distinct flap of loose skin remained uncut.

"It's not cut quite right," Mark said pulling at the flap with his finger and thumb and interrupting Daniel in full throw. The boy fell immediately silent, as the rules required of a charity boy when one of his betters spoke.

"Yes," Jack replied, "Angela does her best but it's not easy for her. She had more than a dozen to cut when Daniel was done and the brats scream and throw themselves about while it's done even with three or four people holding them down. And then there are the village boys all milling about and pushing and trying to get close to see what's being done. And, on top of everything, the added pressure that we all want the thing over and out of the way so we can get back to our houses and have our Sunday lunches."

"Why don't you get her some help then or get the job done at another time or at another place or something?"

"It's obvious you don't live in a village Mark. The rector's wife has cut the boys immediately after Matins on the Sunday following the Sunday on which they were branded for over four hundred years. Propose changing any of that and Angela will see it as a criticism of the way she does the job and be mortally offended. It's easier to correct the occasional errors oneself. Anne like a good mother has been planning to slice that bit of flesh back to Daniel's cock for month but it just gets being put off the way minor jobs do. Its no great deal just a cut with a Stanley knife and then a touch with the electric soldering iron. We've got one down the stable yard somewhere a very handy tool for cauterising fairly small wounds."

"And I see you haven't penetrated the brat yet?" Mark remarked the question implicit in his tone of voice.

"Why yes I suppose he's ready for it. But I was postponing it till you came down to visit. Anne and I were wondering if you'd look after that for us."

Mark gasped in surprise. He knew that it was the custom among more affluent members of the community to offer the first enjoyment of any reasonably attractive pauper boy in their care to a friend. But he had never expected to benefit himself from this pleasant convention.

"You needn't look so surprised Mark," Jack continued laughing. "I noticed the way you used to look at the boy when you visited in the past, as if you were stripping him naked in your imagination. I chatted it over with his mother and she agreed that there was no one we would prefer more to have first fuck of the little tart's bottom."

"You know Mark you and Jean are remarkably alike in some ways. Neither of you are natives of the village but you both instinctively seem to know how pauper scum like this," he continued landing an open handed slap on Daniel's bare rump, "have to be handled if its to be any use at all. You know that branding, cutting and penetration should mark a brat's mind just as indelibly and deeply as its body. Each through the pain it involves tells the brute in the only way it is capable of understanding that it is owned and powerless and it is a lesson it will never forget, provided that is that each job is done right."

"I told Jean that we could be sure that there would be no nonsense of your being kind or gentle with the slut when you enjoy its bottom and she said 'that's the man I want to fuck my son. Tell him he's to go in as deep and hard as he can and not to take any notice of the little shit's screams. After all it doesn't matter if he's torn. Mrs Thomas and I can always sow his bum back up again."

"Well its very nice of you both and I'm touched by your confidence in me but you know Jack I'm not exactly over-endowed. I'm not sure…"

"My dear chap," Jack replied laughing, "I know very well what you're like and what you're capable of. We were at school together and you've been a frequent and very welcome and active visitor to the village ever since those days. I'd describe you as perfectly adequate for all purposes and I've prepared Daniel's bottom with you in mind. I've got a size two plug in him rather than the size four or five if I was going to give him to someone like Big Willy Darling. Just big enough to be sure you can get the tip of your cock into him but you'll still need to hammer away to get beyond that. No nonsense though of using KY jelly or Vaseline or anything though. The brat's own saliva is the only lubricant allowed but you know that anyway."

"Have you got him plugged?" Mark asked for he had seen no sign of such a thing being in the boy and had indeed been rather surprised not to do so.

"Yes indeed, it's a new arrangement. I am rather pleased with it but its still in the trial stage."

"Stop that stupid grizzling slut," Jack snapped for sometime during the discussion of his coming penetration Daniel had begun to whimper, "and bend forward. For heavens sake turn your bottom to the light you stupid turd and pull your bum open. We can't see anything like that."

Impatiently Jack jumped to his feet and placing both hands on the naked boy's hip turned him so that his rump was to the light. With the brat bent double and his hands pulling the cheeks o his bottom apart Mark could see a conical shaped rubber washer partly buried between the lips of his anus. Inside the inverted cone was a small metal toggle resting on what looked like a compressed spring.

Jack moved to stand behind the boy and placing his left hand flat on the boy's bottom to brace the child he took hold of the toggle and pulled. A length of stout nylon cord was drawn out of the boy through the centre of the washer. The spring, a quite sturdy object, the pressure on it released, hung loosely curled round the cord. The cord checked. Jack pulled harder and Daniel gasped in pain. Slowly from between the lips of the brat's anus appeared attached to the nylon cord the end of a rounded, cylindrical tube.

"I won't draw it right out," Jack said keeping the tension on the cord, "there's no point and it would be a bit messy. That tube is solid and is about four inches [10cm] long the other end. The end inside Daniel is similarly rounded."

"Stand up straight boy," Jack commanded sharply.

Daniel obeyed and Jack released his hold on the toggle.

Before Jack's fascinated eyes the chord began to be drawn back into the boy.

"See the slut's bum muscles working," Jack said triumphantly. "The randy little whore can't help himself. The idea occurred to me while I was fucking one of the brats. I can't remember which one now. Was it Jonnie, or Tim or…? Well, it doesn't matter anyway. I'd just got fairly inside the whore and he'd clamped his bottom tight round me and it seemed to be drawing me in, although the stupid bitch was whimpering and moaning and making a general fuss like they usually do, and it came to me. It's much simpler than the old Zelamir plug. It's got no screw to tighten or rubber ring to crush and expand in the boy or bristles or anything. You shove the cylinder into the boy's hole. It's just long enough to trigger the brat's bum muscles and you need to do nothing more. The slut draws it in to himself until the toggle comes up against the washer with its spring. The washer is pulled partly into the boy spreading the lips of his anus and the spring is compressed. Mind you, you have to be careful the cord is not too long. You don't want the slut having constant dry orgasms. The boy's bottom will be straining against that spring the whole time and that I hopes will have effect of strengthening the muscles there and making him a more exciting ride. That's very difficult to measure though and I'd ask you Mark to let me know if you think Daniel's performance is better than you would usually expect and in particular if his bum grips tighter than is usual."

"The plug isn't quite as firmly anchored in the boy as the old Zelamir one but its shape makes it all but impossible for a brat to pull out by himself and, anyway, he knows what'll happen to him if he's caught trying."

"Now I see Gwen has our Salmon salads. I'll just make sure the toggle is properly housed in the washer and the spring compressed. Bend forward again brat. Yes, excellent. Very well, now go and fetch our food. Mister Mark and I are both very hungry."

"I don't suppose," Mark remarked as he watched Daniel trot across the carpeted floor to the bar, "that we are either as hungry as that little sod."

"Hungry," Jack exclaimed surprised. "Hungry, he'll have had a bowl of maize porridge mixed with swill before he started work at five this morning and he'll have another when we get back to the house. That's ample. Any more and the brute would begin to get fat and lazy. Don't make the mistake of thinking the pauper filth are the same as us."

Then Jack jerked his head towards the bar and winked silently indicating to Mark, in the same way as they had used when they were both in the fourth form at school that something amusing and interesting was likely to happen.

Daniel had almost got to the bar when Gwen, who had been leaning with both arms folded in front of her watching him approach, picked up what looked like a sawn off broom handle. The brat who would have learnt early in his existence as a pauper boy to fear sticks in the hands of his betters stopped abruptly. Gwen smiled and beckoned him to her. Very reluctantly Daniel took a further step towards the bar. Gwen hefted the staff in her hand and again beckoned the trembling child forward. Cringing in expectation of the blow to come, for Gwen's intentions were all too plain, he took another step nearer her.

A broad smile split the women's face. She raised the rod and brought it down in a short hard blow across the crown of the boy's head. Daniel yelled and clapped both hands to the top of his head.

"Put your hands down dear," Gwen ordered quietly.

Very slowly Daniel obeyed. Gwen waited a moment permitting Mark and Jack who were lounging in their chairs watching the comedy to share her enjoyment of the whimpering child's fear. Very deliberately she lifted the baton once more. She paused and then brought it cracking down on the brat's head.

"Do you know why I am hitting you? She enquired softly.

"I spose I've done something wrong Miss," Daniel gasped out between sobs.

"You suppose exactly right my sweet," she said her voice as sweet as honey and then suddenly hardening. "That carpet your standing on where the gentlemen stand when they're drinking at the bar. They don't want filthy little pauper tykes like you getting in their way and polluting the place while they're doing so. If filth like you are sent to get something from the bar you walk round the carpet to the window at the side of the bar. Do you see it shit face?"

"Yes Miss."

"And you wait there nice and quietly until I have time to deal with you. Do you understand toerag."

"Yes Miss."

"Daniel," Jack suddenly roared angrily. "Miss Gwen has been kind enough to tell you what you were doing wrong you ungrateful slab of excrement you might have the common courtesy to thank her."

"Thank you Miss. Sorry Miss. Sorry Uncle Jack Sir," the boy faltered.

"And so you should be you turd," Uncle Jack snapped at the sobbing child.

"Gwen," he continued speaking in once again in his usual relaxed tones, "I think you better hit the brat once more to make sure he remembers what you've told him. You know what short memories the pauper scum have."

"Very well Mr Wardle," Gwen said cheerfully.

"Keep your hands down brat," she ordered sharply.

Once again the staff thudded down. Daniel staggered under the impact of the blow. He stood a moment shaking his head and whimpering while the three adults watched him with amused expressions on their faces.

"Are you coming round to the serving window or are you planning to stand there all day while your Master and his friend go hungry?" Gwen enquired with false sweetness.

Somewhat unsteadily Daniel made his way to the window and collected the two plates. Walking carefully round the side of the room, taking great care not to step on the carpet he carried them to the table where the two men were sitting.

"You see," Jack said watching the boy with a quizzical smile, "they can be taught simple things quite quickly if you set about it in the right way."

He waited until Daniel had placed the plates on the table in front of the two men before he spoke directly to the brat.

"Daniel," he said speaking quite mildly, "I'm disappointed that you showed yourself so ungrateful a little brute. What do you think Miss Gwen thinks of you after your failure to say 'thank you' to her."

Daniel did not reply but hung his head.

"I'll tell you Daniel what she thinks. She thinks you must have a Mummy and Uncle who spoil you, who don't care how you behave and haven't tried to teach you to be grateful when people try to help you improve your appalling behaviour."

His voice hardened as he continued.

"But you know and I know that that's not true. Your Mummy and I have tried very hard indeed. It won't do Daniel. It won't do at all."

Without warning Jack smashed his clenched fist with all his strength into the pit of the boy's stomach. Daniel jack-knifed. He collapsed to his knees his hands clasped to his tummy before rolling onto his side on the floor.

"Excellent salmon," Jack remarked as he began to eat his lunch apparently oblivious of the ball of sobbing naked boy misery at his feet. "Rod caught – none of that farmed rubbish. We've had quite a good run of salmon up the Dingle this season though the water is rather low now after all this fine weather."

Some ten minutes later Jack was in the middle of a detailed and to Mark rather tedious, for he did think his old friend tended to bang on excessively about his fishing, account of the catching of his last salmon.

"It was bright and clear and very low water so I had gone as fine as I dared. A five pound breaking strain nylon cast and a size twelve teal and silver. I was just fishing down into the neck of the sheep dip pool where there was still a bit of current to move the fly when there was a boil in the water and I knew I was into something good. Well I'd been casting as long a line as I could although you know the bank's bushed a bit there so the back casts a problem. Oh excuse me a moment Mark."

He broke off suddenly.

"You," he said prodding Daniel's bare bottom with the toe of his shoe, "you've had long enough to get over a little tap in the tummy. Get your idle carcass over to the brat pen where you belong and wait till you're wanted again. Though what use a lump of shit like you is likely to be to anyone I don't know. Move yourself now and be sure you sit right or you'll get a bloody sight more than a prod in the guts."

Moaning quietly Daniel heaved himself painfully to his feet. Bent double, still clasping his hands to his tummy, he managed a couple of uncertain steps and then stumbled to his knees. He dragged himself on all fours to the corner of the room where two low wooden rail set at right angles to each other had created a small square area, symbolically at least, isolated from the rest of the room.

All public and many larger private rooms had such areas popularly known as 'brat pens' where charity boys could be put to wait out of the way while their masters conducted their business or enjoyed themselves. Mark started as he saw with a feeling of quiet pride that the floor of the pen was covered with what was originally clearly a dark green plastic mat but which was now liberally spattered with dark stains. It was a larger version of the sort of mat that you found outside back doors in the country side made up of many hundreds of individual stiff plastic blades designed to scrape the mud from your Wellingtons when you wiped them on it.

"Yes Jack," said who had noticed his friend start and had guessed the reason for it, "I accepted your excellent suggestion that I should substitute plastic door matting for the more traditional chore matting at Dingley Dell and it was so clearly an improvement that it was quickly adopted through out the area."

"You know how naturally lazy and selfish pauper brats are if left to there own devices. Although the chore mats were very uncomfortable to sit on some managed, despite their obvious duty to keep alert and ready to serve their Masters, to fall asleep while sitting on them. There has not been a single recorded instance of this happening since the introduction of these plastic mats. Plenty of brats with bloody bottoms from the plastic blades sticking into them but that's a price worth paying."

Daniel had reached the wooden bar bounding the brat pen. He dragged himself painfully over it and began gingerly to lower his rump onto the plastic mat.

"Oh for God's sake look at the stupid little slut now," Jack burst out, half laughing at the comical expression on the boy's face, a grimace speaking equally of apprehension and pain as he felt the first touch of the dagger sharp blades against the tender flesh of his bottom.

Jumping to his feet Jack strode across to the brat pen. Burying a hand in the Daniel's hair he hauled the boy upright. Then he kicked the brat's feet away slamming Daniel with the boy's whole weight on his bottom down onto the mat.

"Now sit properly filth," Jack ordered raising his voice to be heard over the brat's squeal of anguish. "Ankles crossed and pulled up to your crutch, knees spread wide, arms down by your side. Mr Mark and I want to see your balls touching the floor."

Daniel hurried to obey but he was neither quick enough nor sufficiently compliant to satisfy his Jack who bending down placed a hand on each of the hapless child's knees and pressed them down hard. When Jack had forced the boy's knees down so that they touching the ground he deliberately pushed forward so that Daniel's bare bottom was raked by the keen plastic spikes. These scraped the boy's rump just as if it was a boot being wiped across them except instead of removing mud and dirt they tore away skin and tender boy's flesh.

"Shut up," Jack snapped slapping the brat back handed across the face, "Mister Mark and I won't be able to here each other speak with you making that stupid row you selfish unthinking lump of pig shit."

"I don't know what the brat is making all that fuss about," he remarked to Mark as he seated himself once more at the table. "The little tyke should be grateful. If he went to sleep while he's with me and the lazy little sod probably would if he was allowed although the hardest work he's done since he started at five this morning was to run the five miles [8km] from home to here, he'd deserve and most certainly get, the hardest flogging of his young life."

This statement by Jack was typical Mark thought of the responsible and caring attitude he took to the charity boys entrusted to him.

He glanced across at Daniel sitting rigidly in the prescribed position. The boy's body was wracked with silent tears his face twisted in pain. He saw the tears and snot mixed with blood from the lip split by Jack's backhanded blow trickling down his chin. The boy was so terrified that he did not dare to move even to wipe the filth from his face with the back of his hand. How fortunate the child was to be placed in the charge of someone who understood the importance of providing a firmly discipline and structured environment for one so totally lacking in moral fibre and incapable of self discipline. Jack also clearly understood that lacking self discipline, self respect, modesty or that spirit of emulation and competition that are characteristic of a mentally and spiritually sound boy there was no practical way of motivating or controlling Daniel or the other pauper brats in his care than by the well justified fear of the physical consequences of disobedience. Put bluntly Jack knew the only thing that pauper boys like Daniel understood or respected was the lash well laid on and he acted accordingly.

"Well," said Jack eventually pushing away his plate, "that was very good. I suppose we should be on our way soon but we have time I am sure for another pint if you wish for one."

"This Black Sheep brew is excellent," Mark replied.

Jack made the smallest movement of his index finger, lifting it just a fraction from the table on which his hand rested. Daniel, who had nothing to do for the last hour but watch anxiously for some signal from his master, anxiously for he knew from painful experience what would happen to him if he missed it, was on his feet in the instance.

Jack did not speak to the boy but simply pointed at the two empty pint pots. As Daniel turned to go to the bar Mark saw that the smooth curve of the boy's bottom was dappled with dark beads of blood where the plastic spikes of the mat had punctured the deeply tanned skin. A couple of minutes later fresh pints were on the table and Daniel was back in the brat pen. This time Mark noted approvingly the boy did not hesitate but, screwing up his face in anticipation of the imminent agony to come, sat straight down. For the next half-hour the boy sat watching his master and his friend drink. He was himself thirsty and hungry and desperately tired, his legs were racked with cramp from having to keep them crossed and his ankles tucked up into his crutch. His body ached from the blows and kicks inflicted on it while the tortured flesh of his bottom felt as though the skin and flesh had been ripped away by a metal grater. Daniel though felt no anger, no resentment. This was what being a pauper boy meant and he was a pauper boy.

Half an hour or so later Mark tipped the last drops of his beer down his throat.

"That was very good indeed," he said regretfully placing the empty glass on the table.

"Ah well," said Jack doing the same, "all good things come to an end I suppose."

He stood up and Daniel starting to his feet scuttled hastily across the room ready to open the door for the two men.

"Thank you Gwen," called Jack as he walked out of the bar to be answered by a faint "thank you Mr Wardle," from within.

Away from the hotel, out in the street it was as hot or even Mark thought hotter than before. Across the road the pony boys stood in the blazing sun. They were clearly being still bothered by the flies shifting uneasily and jerking their heads and shoulders in an attempt to dislodge them. Hardly had the two men begun to walk across to where they were tethered when they suddenly quietened. Apparently alerted by that sixth sense, that all pauper boys seem to have, that warns them when their master is near.

Jack unhitched the reigns from the rail when Mark remembered his Times.

"Where's my newspaper," he asked sharply. "My Times, it was on the seat in the railway carriage I can't see it now."

There was an ominous silence. The two men both looked at Daniel who began to cry quietly.

"You stupid careless little git. Can't you get the simplest thing right?" Jack exclaimed kicking the boy savagely on the shin. "It's too hot to beat you now but you can look forward to Mrs Thomas flaying the skin from your bottom when we get home."

"Tell you what Jack," Mark intervened, "give the slut to me to flog. I find thrashing a boy's bottom an entertaining and arousing prelude to fucking it."

"Yes I remember that of you from when we were at school. Fine, I know I can rely on you to get the message across to the careless little brute."

"But, Daniel," Jack continued now speaking with icy menace, "your Mummy will be very, very upset by your stupid selfish irresponsible behaviour. You should be ashamed of yourself, after all the effort and care she has taken to try to make something worth while of you, the hours spent trying to beat some sense of responsibility and gratitude into your worthless carcass, to let her down in this way. You have very good reason to cry now and I am sure Mister Mark will give you even more reason when he thrashes you tonight. I can tell you Mister Mark knows very well how to use the cane on a useless bag of squalling shit like you."

"Come on Mark. Don't lets waste any more time now on this turd."

Jack clambered into the trap and gathering the reigns in his hands waited for his friend to join him. Then with a shake of the reigns and a loud 'gee up' he set the trap into motion. Once clear of the yard a couple of sharp flicks of the whip that raised deep red weals across the pony boy's deeply tanned shoulders soon raised their pace to quick trot. They clattered up the main street with Daniel running behind, Jack calling out and waiving cheerfully to various acquaintances as they passed. Once a charity boy plodding along bent double under some heavy load threatened to impede their progress but a well aimed cut across the back of his thighs from Jack's whip sent him scuttering to the side of the road.

Soon they were out in the country. Even here though sitting on the trap up above the level of the hedgerows it was oppressively hot.

"We'll go a bit faster and get some more air," Jack said whipping the boys up to an even faster pace.

It was much more pleasant Mark thought than travelling in a car. Sitting out in the open, enjoying the breeze created by their passing, the two pony boys their naked bodies slicked with sweat straining against as they ran. The scent of honey suckle was heavy in the air and in the sky on either side of them skylarks sang shrilly. A sense of wellbeing and rightness filled him, partly no doubt accounted for by the two excellent pints of beer he had drunk. He was very glad Jack had decided to bring the trap to meet him.

They had reached the point where the road ran through a small coppice, the trees arching over them on either side plunging them into sudden deep shade, when round the bend coming from the opposite direction appeared a Ford Fiesta.

Jack hauled on the reigns slowing the trap to a walk and pulling it into the side of the road. The car also slowed right down and pulled over. The driver a young man in a dark suit and a dog collar rolled down the window.

"Good afternoon Mr Wardle," he called out.

"Jack, my dear chap Jack, I don't know how many times I've asked you to call me Jack. Anyway let me introduce you to my old school friend Mark Legg. Mark this is Father Roger Matthews our very excellent curate who plays a great part in instructing our charity boys in those virtues that are appropriate to their station in life, obedience, humility and willing submission to their betters."

Mark and the young clergymen nodded and smiled at each other.

"My work with the charity boys gives me great satisfaction. To know that one is instrumental in making something worthwhile out of such dross, to give purpose and meaning to lives that would be otherwise wasted in ignorant self indulgence, one feels indeed that one is labouring in the Lords vineyard."

"Is that not young Daniel there?" Father Matthews continued catching sight oh the brat who had sidled round the trap and was now trying to put it between him and the cleric. "Yes it is. Your induction was some five months ago wasn't it? Come here child and let me see how you are making out."

Very reluctantly, dragging his feet, Daniel began slowly to move towards him. Jack was not standing any nonsense from the brat. Leaning back in his seat he gave him a flick with the whip on his bare flank. The brat yelped and ceased to dawdle.

Father Matthews lent out of his car window and drew the boy to him. Mark saw the child shudder at the man's touch.

"Are you being a good little slut Daniel?" he asked running his hand up the back of one firm young thigh. "Is Mister Jack pleased with you?"

The boy tried to speak. His lips moved but no words came, only a half-strangled sob. Father Matthews moved his hand round to the front of the boy's thigh.

"Oh dear Daniel you seem to have lost your tongue." Father Matthews moved his hand upwards. It reached the boy's crutch. The man's fingers played idly with the slut's hairless balls and tiny cock.

"He's a pretty averagely useless lump of dog shit," Jack said roughly.

"Well if the little lad is not satisfactory you should send him back for remedial training. I am sure we can sort out very quickly any little problems the child is experiencing."

Father Matthews pinched Daniel's balls between his finger and thumb and the increasing the tightness of his grip twisted.

"But that," he continued raising his voice to be heard over the boy's screams, "is not what I stopped the car to talk to you about. I fear I have been a little to rough with that gate boy of yours that you so kindly gave me to fuck. What's his name? Nicky is it? It's become quite a regular thing with me, if my parish work takes me out this way and I feel so inclined, to take advantage of your invitation. Today to my amazement when I stopped the car, instead of immediately bracing his shoulders against the gate and getting his bum up in the air ready for me to fuck, the cheeky little sod began wittering on about how thirsty he was after being out in the sun from dawn this morning being chained to the gate by his wrists and how his Mummy had said she wasn't going to waste her time carrying water out to a useless piece of pig shit like him, as if any of that was of any importance to me. And then, and then," his voice raised in outrage, "the insolent brute begged me to fetch him some water from the trough by the side of the road. Typical of the charity scum – give them an inch and they'll take a yard."

"I expect you gave the slut a good deal more than an inch," Jack said laughing.

"Yes indeed I did," Father Matthews said chuckling in his turn, "the full 9½ inches [24cm]. I was so furious at his impertinence that I simply jammed his head through the two lower bars of the gate and fucked his backside there and then forgetting to lubricate my cock with saliva. I'm afraid I ripped him a bit and he's bleeding rather a lot. I think perhaps you should have a look at him if you can spare the time when you go past."

"My dear chap don't worry about a triviality like that. Who ever cares about a minor thing like a pauper boy's torn bottom. If its too bad I'll get Mrs Thomas to stitch it up, and I'll certainly have the brat whipped to teach him not to bother his betters about his own stupid wants."

"Now I must be getting on or we'll miss tea. I don't suppose that Nicky is going to be much fun to fuck now – his bottom'll be too loose unless I decide to get him sown up. Come up to the house one evening next week for supper and have a look at the brats about the place. If you see one you fancy you can have the use of him."

A few minutes later and they were trotting up to the park gate leading into the grounds of the big house. Mark could see the gate boy had been badly damaged. He was half hanging by his wrists from the top bar of the big white gate. There were dark stains down the inside and backs of his thighs formed from blood and other liquids dribbling from his ravaged hole. For a moment it looked as though the brat would not be able even to open the gate to let the trap through as his bare feet scrabbled ineffectively at the gravel. However a flick of the whip across his rump brought a him further access of strength.

"Mark, would you get down here and get the gate right open and secure it. You see that sort of hook thing set in the drive. That'll help restrain the brat when I sort out his bum. I'll tether the pony boys to the railings a little up the drive. They're sure to attract flies and God knows there are enough about here already."

There were indeed, Mark thought as he jumped down onto the drive and walked across to the gate, a lot of flies about. A cloud of them swarmed around the boy and crawled over his body feasting on the filth trickling from his bottom.

"Well," Jack said striding up with Daniel padding bare footed along a few feet behind him, "Father Matthews certainly gave the brat a good hammering. We'll need to get the slut cleaned up a bit before I can see how damaged he really is. Hold these a moment would you."

He handed Mark a clear plastic bag containing a torpedo shaped butt plug with what looked like a washer at one end and a plain white flat plastic envelope. It seemed to Mark that the butt plug was made of or rather was covered with a white porous material. It was impossible to see what the other envelope contained.

"The plug is impregnated with antiseptic," Jack explained. "I always carry a few of these in the first aid box. Never know when you may need them. Especially when Father Matthews is about. You can be sure the Nicky'll play up a bit when we put it in him. The envelope just contains dressings."

Jack slipped his left hand under the gate boy and grabbing hold of his balls pushed upwards lifting the brat back onto his feet and raising his bottom into the air.

"Daniel," Jack said.

Without further orders the boy squatted down on his heels and buried his face in his fellow brat's bottom. For a moment there was silence apart from the sounds of sucking and slurping as Daniel worked at cleaning out his fellow brat's hole.

"I always wonder how the sluts can make themselves do that," Mark remarked watching the back of Daniel's head move as he licked away. "But he seems willing enough."

"So he should be," Jack replied "though to tell you the truth Jean and I had a terrible time getting him to do it to start with. I don't know how many hours we spent altogether with me forcing Daniel's head down into the bottom of some other slut, Jean standing behind him cursing him and laying into him with the strap and Daniel howling and screaming and begging his Mummy not to make him do it. Then we'd lay off for a bit and explain to him that he had to do it and tell him that he was wicked ungrateful little turd not to do what his Mummy told him. And he'd weep and cry and promise that next time he'd do it. So we'd start the whole weary process again and straight away the stupid little brute would struggling not to have his face pushed into another sluts bum and screaming and yelling."

"We were near giving up on him and returning him to the trustees for remedial training but I suggested we should try an old trick that my father used to use occasionally. I mentioned it to Jean and she was against it at first. Said a slut should not be rewarded for doing something it should do as a matter of duty. She's very high principled you know and I admire her for it and I wasn't too comfortable about the bribery aspect of the thing but… well if it worked…"

"So Jean and I got hold of Daniel and told him he had one last opportunity or it'd be back to Father Matthews and a course of remedial training. Daniel started sobbing and promising this time he would do it. Well we'd heard that before, the lying little bag of shit saying "Mummy I will put my tongue in there this time I promise Mummy" and then when it comes to the point struggling an fighting and screaming to escape doing it, so we didn't take too much notice. We took the slut out onto the drive with his hands tied behind him and I grabbed one of the whelps that spends their time on their knees weeding it and I bend him over in front of Daniel. I could see the turd starting to panic again so before he could I pulled a bar of chocolate out of my pocket and showed it to him."

"You know what the sluts are like with chocolate. They never get it, at least mine certainly don't, but the sight of it drives them wild. And the sight of that bar drove all other thoughts out of Daniel's head. You could see greed replace panic in the slut's eyes. So I said to him "you can have a bit of chocolate Daniel but you'll have to get from where I put it." Then I snapped a square off the bar and with Daniel watching I pushed up the hole of the other little brat."

"Well the greedy brute couldn't think about anything but the chocolate and he was pulling away from Jean that had hold of him by his collar. But she hung onto him while I pushed a second square into the other slut and then for a minute or two longer so that the stuff had a chance to melt and run a bit. And then she let go of Daniel's collar and all we had to do was to stand back while Daniel liked and sucked every last bit of chocolate out of the other boy's hole. We had a good laugh about it and Daniel's never been reluctant to get his tongue up another brat's bum since then."

Mark thought this story just yet another illustration of his old friend's conscientious attitude to the pauper boys committed to his care and the infinite pains he took to educate and school them.

"Now he should have cleaned Nicky's bum up well enough now. Let's have a look."

Jack slipped his free hand through Daniel's collar and pulled his head away from the gate boy's bum.

"Now Mark will you take over from me holding this slut."

Mark stepped forward and relinquished his grip of the Nicky's tiny balls to him. Parting the brat's buttocks with his two thumbs Jack bent down to examine the damage.

"Could be worse," he said, "Don't know whether I'll bother to have it stitched or not. Perhaps it's hardly worth bothering. The sluts used meat now and it doesn't matter if its bum is slack. Anyway I'll shove the anti-sceptic plug in him and put a dressing over it to keep off the flies and decide on what else to do, if anything, later."

"Mark give me the butt plug and dressing and get a grip of the brat's collar with your spare hand and twist it so he can't breath. Give me the nod when you feel the slut's body go slack and I'll slam the plug into him. But hold onto him hard because he's going to buck like mad if you don't when the anti-sceptic bights."

Holding the envelope with the dressing inside between his teeth Jack opened the plastic bag containing the anti-sceptic butt plug. Deprived of air by Mark's grip on his collar the gate boy struggled briefly but then all the strength seemed to drain from his body. Mark nodded and Jack rammed the plug into the boy and quickly slapped the dressing over his hole.

"OK Mark let go and stand well back," Jack said himself stepping hastily away from the boy.

Released from Mark's grip the boy's knees gave under him and for a split second he hung motionless suspended from the top bar of the park gate by his wrists. Then he jerked convulsively, threw his head back and screamed. It was a shrill scarcely human sound that sent the rooks clattering and cawing in alarm from their roosts in the twin rows of beech trees lining the drive. The boy jerked frantically at his bonds trying to free himself, twisting and tugging in a grotesque pain driven dance in a desperate effort to get at and dislodge the plug set deep in his bottom. Scream after scream was wrenched from the wildly capering boy as the powerful anti-sceptic cleansed his internal wounds.

"Well," Jack said with a laugh as he turned away from the boy, "it's certainly hurting so presumably its working."

"What about the gate?" Mark asked. "Should we close it?"

"No need. We can leave it fastened back for now and young William Smythe can release it when he goes down to the station to fetch your case. The brat should have calmed down by then."

"Indeed," Jack added brightening, "I might ask William to give the slut the flogging that's owing to him for his insolence in bothering Father Matthew for a drink of water. It would be good experience for the boy. He's always enjoyed watching the brats being flogged and its time he thrashed a few himself."

The two men climbed back into the trap. Jack cracked his whip and soon they were rolling briskly up the drive towards the big house.

Chapter 3

"There are surely more than when I was here last," Mark remarked glancing behind him and seeing the number of small brown bodies crouched together on the drive.

"Yes," Jack laughed, a little embarrassed, "it's a small thing really but I feel I've been given a lot in this world and I should try and make the lives of those less fortunate than me easier if I can. And Mark there are so many decent caring parents now seeing that the best thing for their brats is to make them charity boys…well supply is really in danger of exceeding demand. There's no problem in placing boys when they get bigger. The farmers are keen enough to take eleven or twelve year olds provided they're reasonably sturdy and Mr Patel will take them a couple of years younger for his factory but there's not a great demand for the seven to nine year olds. But there's an awful lot of them being offered and inducted. Now can you think of anything worse? You're a respectable couple; probably both working and your stuck with a snivelling newly entered pauper brat you can't get rid of. Those brats need constant watching and disciplining, especially in the early years and you can't provide either not without one or other of you giving up work or something. But you either do that or you keep the little turd tied up all day and try to beat some sense into the brute in the evenings or at weekends and that's not at all satisfactory."

"Well I can take any number here. There's plenty of work for them. I've got three gangs weeding the paths and a similar number on the flowerbeds and vegetable gardens. Once that lot we've just passed reach the end of the drive they turn round and start back again sixteen hours a day, three hundred and sixty five days in the year, snow, frost rain or sunshine and the other gangs work in a similar way."

"Everybody gains. The parents are freed of the responsibility of schooling their brat when they can't afford the time to do the job properly. The community is preserved from the disruption that would be caused by a the appearance of a group of unruly, ill disciplined, pauper brats and you know that could have serious consequences and corrupt the whole system. I get my grounds kept tidy. The brats benefit from being toughened up and disciplined."

"I think it's very good of you but it must cost you a bit."

"Hardly costs me a thing I pay sixpence a brat a month and I only take them from within a six mile [10km] radius so they are fed at home and can easily make it here before their working day begins at five in the morning. They work through till nine in the evening and even the ones living six miles [10km] away should be able to get home by ten thirty to eat, if there is anything for them to eat, and sleep and be ready for the next days work."

"I get the mothers to sign the normal indentures but I make it clear I won't stand on the letter of it if they get a better offer for their brats. And a lot do. The farmers seem especially keen to take boys who have done a spell working here. They're better disciplined and better workers than the general run of brats. Mister Brown from the Home Farm tells me the ones he's taken from here were the only ones out of his brutes he didn't have to use the whip on to get them out on the fields after the big snow last year."

"I do take the opportunity to try to influence and improve the quality of brats being offered for service. I make it clear that I give preference to brats that haven't been to school. In my view you might as well teach a monkey to read and write as a pauper boy. What's the point? The brutes aren't put in the world to loll about reading books."

"It's different with stock like Daniel who are entered at nine or ten. It's almost unavoidable that they've been to school. All you can do is to flog them hard if you suspect them of reading anything. The danger is of them picking up ideas that would make them discontented and make their lives more difficult."

The drive swung sharp the left and the trap suddenly emerged from the shade of the avenue of trees on to a wide sweep of gravel. Before them now stood the house itself and the formal gardens ablaze with flowers.

"We'll go straight round to the stables Mark. I expect you'd like to see the pair I'm putting up for the Baron Corvo Cup tomorrow and I've got to ask you William Smythe to take a trap down to collect your cases. I'm sure he'll be there. He spends all his spare time helping on the yard. He's very keen. The best type of boy."

They swept round the front of the house with its well-tended flowerbeds. Charity boys, some wearing ragged shorts but many quite naked, stopping for a brief instant from their labours to kneel and press their heads to the ground as they passed.

By the archway leading to the kitchen yard Mark saw that a single brat was expiating some minor offence on the Vale of Dingle equivalent of the pillory. He was Mark judged about ten years old and was performing his enforced penance naked, standing on a wooden bench, his hands bound tight behind his back. The chain securing him to the cross bar above his head had been drawn tight forcing him up onto his toes. Alerted by the rattle of the trap's wheels over the cobbles that had replaced the well raked gravel of the drive the little brute lifted it's head to stare at them an expression of terror, comical in its intensity, contorting its face.

There was no escape. All he could do was to watch as the trap carrying the two grinning men approached closer. Just as they drew opposite the whimpering slut Jack judging the distance and timing to a nicety flicked the whip into his crutch the sharp snap of the lash blending with the boy's piercing howl.

"Well done," Mark said congratulating Jack on his accuracy, "especially as it seemed to me the tyke's balls didn't offer as good a target as usual."

"You noticed that," Jack said reigning in the pony boys. "That's because Jean came up with a new way of securing the brats to the cross bar."

"Here, turd," he snapped addressing Daniel, "hold the ponies."

"I'll show you," he continued speaking to Jack and jumping down to the ground.

"The problem with the old method was with the youngest boys in particular with small tight ball sacks it was difficult to loop the chain round the slut's balls, especially as fear often made its balls almost disappear into its body. I was often reduced to trying to dig the things out of the boy with my finger tips."

"Anne was watching one day when I had a problem and she asked why didn't we use a hook. We could insert it into the back of the scrotum thus avoiding any danger of leaving a permanent visible mark on the boy. Provided we kept away from its balls, used a clean hook and cleaned up the wound when we took the animal down it wouldn't do any real lasting damage."

He turned and began to walk back to the boy who promptly peed himself in terror.

"Disgusting brute, no self control," Jack remarked contemptuously. "Oh well it's emptied its bladder now so there's no danger of it doing so over us."

"There," he said walking up close to the brat and pointing. "You can see we use a stainless steel hook. The only problem is that the hook draws the ball sack up rather than forcing it out as happened when a cord was looped round its base. As a result it doesn't present, as you noticed, such a good target."

"Bled a bit," Mark said looking down at the boy's scrotum, already swelling and turning a deep purple where the end of the lash had nicked it, with a stream of dried blood flowing from the wound where the hook had been sunk into it.

"He'll bleed a good bit more when we get the hook out of him," Jack remarked cheerfully, "but he's a healthy young brute and it'll heal fast enough. Come on lets get round to the stables."

The two men turned away leaving the pauper boy to suffer. Neither of them thought to enquire as to why the lad had been strung up in this way or for how long he would be required to endure the agony of his punishment.

A minute or two later the trap dashed through the gateway under the white painted wooden clock tower and into the stable yard. Jack reined in the two pony boys. Daniel ran round to the front of the trap to hold the boys. A groom in breeches and leather gaiters hurried over followed at a respectful distance by a couple of bare footed stable boys.

"Get these brutes out from the shafts Tom," Jack ordered, "and get them watered and groomed. You'll need to dress the cuts on their legs and don't let them bloat themselves on the water. They haven't drunk anything from this morning and they've been worked hard so they'll be sure to do so if you give them half a chance."

"Very good Mr Wardle," the groom said touching his cap.

"And where is young William Smythe, Tom?"

"Down by the loose boxes Sir grooming the pair we're racing tomorrow."

"Good we'll go and find him."

As they moved off Mark heard behind him the groom shouting shortly followed by the sound of blows landing on bare flesh and shrill squeals of pain, the usual sounds that accompany the setting of charity boys to work.

Mark spotted William Smythe before Jack had a chance to point him out. A stocky dark haired boy, the quality of the youth made him stand out from the pauper brats about him. It was not his clothes that distinguished him from such animals for, as many free boys did when the opportunity offered, he had chosen to shed them. Nor was it the absence of a brand on his left flank or a collar about his neck for, when Mark first caught sight of him, he was too far off for him to see whether the boy wore those marks of servitude. He was hardly if at all less deeply tanned than the brats that laboured in the yard and he was better built and more physically developed than a pauper boy of his age would be that again was not obvious at a distance.

Even the task he was engaged on, sponging down a choice pony boy with soapy water could easily be one allocated to a charity boy. Yet anyone looking at him and the young brat standing near by would have no difficulty in distinguishing between master and slut, although the slut was wearing shorts, all be it ragged threadbare and about three sizes too small. It seemed to Mark that the two boys together, the free boy and the pauper brat simultaneously illustrated and confirmed the basic truth on which old Hiram's charity was founded. That some were born to rule and others to serve and that it was best for all both, rulers and ruled, that this should be recognised and enforced. Who seeing young William Smythe, relaxed confident convinced of his own worth and superiority, and contrast him with pauper brat acquiescing even content in his humiliation and servitude could doubt this truth or doubt that each had been correctly assigned their roll.

William was so intent on his task that he did not hear the two men approach.

"Hello William. This is Mr Legg he's staying with me for the races."

The boy startled turned sharply. Mark noticed, he could hardly fail to do so, for the lad made no attempt to hide the fact, that he had an erection.

"How do you do Sir?" William asked holding out his hand wand Mark shook it gravely.

"I thought Richard would be helping you. Is he about somewhere? Richard is William's young bother and our jockey for tomorrow," Jack explained to Mark.

"He's down at the exercise yard trying to get little Xerxes to trot properly. I don't think he's getting on too well. I tried to tell him how it should be done but he doesn't like me telling him things."

"Younger brothers are like that sometimes. I'll go and sort things out in a minute or two. And you are getting Merlin ready for tomorrow?" Jack asked. It was the convention to give pony boys rather fancy names.

"Yes Uncle Jack," he replied, "I've done Lucifer," "I've tethered him in the sun to dry. Once I've finished Merlin they'll just need their hides oiled and they'll be ready for tomorrow."

He turned back to his work. Placing one hand between the pony boy's shoulders he pushed so that the boy bent forward.

"Get your legs apart," he ordered reinforcing his command with a series of sharp slaps on the inside of Merlin's thighs. The pony boy obediently shifted his feet apart and William began to sponge between his legs, white soapy water running down the inside of the brute's strong brown thighs.

"Be careful he doesn't cum," Jack said warningly and indeed Lucifer's prick was rock hard, "we don't want him wasting his energy before tomorrow."

William hastily dropped the sponge back in the bucket. William put his right hand between Merlin's legs and pressed his fingertips hard into the pony boy's perineum. Merlin whimpered softly and a few seconds later his erection was gone.

"Sorry Uncle Jack," William grinned, "lucky you spotted it."

He picked up a cutthroat razor from the low stone wall beside him and began to shave the inside of Merlin's thighs at the junction of his legs just behind his ball sack. The pony boy flinched at the touch of cold steel against his tender flesh and then stood still.

"I don't know why we have to do this really," William remarked biting his lips in concentration, "the brute has hardly any hair on its body."

"Well it's the rules and you know it is particularly important this time that there should be no hair on them at all anywhere."

Mark hoped that some explanation would emerge as to why this should be important on this particular occasion but William simply nodded in agreement and continued scraping away at Merlin's legs removing non-existent hair.

"It's funny," he remarked as he worked, "Merlin is three years older than me and yet he has less hair on his body than I have."

"It's just another way that pauper boys are different from us and talking of pauper brats what's this little tyke here?" Jack asked clipping the brat who had been standing a silent witness to their conversation none too gently on the ear. "He's not one of mine."

Mark who had been aware the boy was there but up to then had not taken much notice of him, after all there were dozens of charity boys about the place and one brown skinned slut is very much like another, glanced at the brat. And really there was nothing remarkable about it. About ten years old, a skinny little animal, even for a charity boy, closely cropped fair hair, longish legs, narrow hips, tight deeply dimpled rump, thin shoulders and arms, there were dozens of others just like him. He was wearing a pair of threadbare shorts, so small that they started a quarter of the way down his hips, that might once have been, well, any colour so faded were they, were now an indeterminate pale grey. It was clear from the livid bruises that marked the back of his thighs where they emerged from his shorts and the exposed upper slopes of his bottom that someone had recently given him a severe flogging but that hardly served to distinguish him from his fellows.

"That's David. He's my brat Uncle Jack," William said and then added, "well he's really Mr Henry's but he asked my Dad to take charge of the little turd because he's away so much on business. Mr Henry dropped him off with us yesterday and Dad said I should have the slut so I can learn how to handle filth like him."

"It looks as though he's done something wrong already," Mark remarked prodding one of the boy's bruised thighs.

"Oh no he hasn't; not anything special, beyond getting born and burdening the community with his existence and that sort of thing. It's just that Dad takes every new brat the moment it arrives down the bottom of the garden and flays its bottom. Dad says it teaches it whose boss and what to expect if it steps an inch out of line and anyway he enjoys doing it. But this time since the brat was to be mine Dad said I had to beat it."

"You thrashed him yourself did you William?" Jack asked.

"Yes, Dad just held him down for me while I took the strap to his bottom. Mum said she could hear him screaming in the sitting room," William added with evident pride.

Jack reached out for the slut and, without speaking, took hold of one thin shoulder turning David so that the boy's back was towards him. He hooked a finger in the waste band of the David's shorts and pulled downwards so that the boy's bottom was bared to view. The boy's rump was striped with angry red weals with here and there darker patches where the belt had torn the skin and the brat had bled. The stripes were overlaid on a background of deep purple bruising with a pen-umbra of yellowy green flesh where the deeper bruising was coming out.

"Well you have done a good job on the slut and I don't expect Peter was any softer on him either. He isn't a man to stand any nonsense from a piece of pauper shit like it."

He reached out and grabbed hold of one bruised buttock digging his fingers hard into the tortured flesh.

"Stop making that stupid noise," he ordered raising his voice to be heard over the brat's squeal of pain. "You ought to be grateful to your young Master for flogging you so hard and trying to help you become a good obedient hardworking slut. I am sure you need all the help you can get you useless lump of pig shit. Don't you think you're a lucky slut to have two such caring masters as Mister Peter and Master William?"

"Oh yes Mister Jack Sir," Mark realised that William must have told the slut the name of the owner of the property they were visiting or he had picked the information up from another charity boy. "I am grateful to Mister Peter and Master William for trying so hard to make me a better more useful slut and I hope Master William will beat me as hard as he can when ever I make a mistake or am slow or stupid because that's the only way stupid little animals like me will ever learn and………"

"When you've finished Merlin William," Jack said cutting across the brat's whining, "would you like to put Pegasus and Orion in the light gig and pick up Mr Legg's case the station in Muggleton."

"And on the way down give that gate boy of mine, Nicky, a good thrashing for me."

"Certainly Uncle Jack. Could William take a turn beating Nicky? He's been in a strop all day cos he wasn't allowed to join in flogging David. Dad said David was now my brat and I had to do it."

"Provided Nicky finishes up with a raw bum I don't care which of you gives it to him but I do want the little turd's bottom thoroughly bloodied."

"Don't worry Uncle Jack it will be," William promised cheerfully.

"I've every confidence in you William and now Mr Legg and I had better go and have a chat with Richard. It sounds as though he'll need a bit of help with teaching Xerxes to trot."

"Uncle Jack before you go and see Richard. Mrs Willis from Rose Cottage is here with her young son Bobbie. She would like you to take him in as a colt. I asked her to wait in the tack room."

"I'll have a look at the animal now. Perhaps you could come along William. I'd be glad of your opinion. It won't take a moment and you can finish grooming Merlin afterwards."

The tack room was at the end of the range of loose boxes and was part a store for saddlery and other related items and part an office. The room was a large one and rather gloomy except at one end where there was a large window. It was at that end that Mrs Willis, a large motherly woman, was sitting patiently on a wooden chair beside a roll top desk. On the floor at her feet huddled a naked seven-year-old boy.

"Mrs Willis, I'm sorry to have kept you waiting. I've only just this moment got back here from Muggleton where I was meeting my old friend Mark Legg," Jack said, in his kindly courteous way that set everybody at ease.

"You know young William Smythe I am sure," he continued as he pulled a chair out from the desk and, turning it so it faced Mrs Willis, sat down.

"That's all right Mr Wardle. I've only been here a few minutes and its nice and cool here out of the sun. What it is, is I wonder if you would like my Bobbie for your yard."

"Stand up now Bobbie and let the gentleman take a look at you," she snapped in a tone quite different from the ingratiating one that she had used speaking to Jack and reinforcing the command with a sharp clip on the side of the head. "Quickly don't keep everybody waiting you stupid little tyke."

The boy scrambled hastily to his feet and stood quietly in the light of the window with his head bowed. So far as Mark could see the child was a healthy looking little beast. His slim young body tanned a deep nut brown all over told of a life spent naked in the open air. The two dark purple welts that ribbed the smooth curve of his bottom were clear evidence that Mrs Willis believed in the efficacy of the traditional methods of disciplining the young. But how one could judge whether the small seven-year-old would in nine years time have grown into a strong pony boy endowed with endurance and speed he did not know.

Jack sat back in his chair his head tilted slightly to one side a faint almost quizzical smile on his face. Mark glanced at William Smythe and saw that he was holding his head at almost the same angle and had a similar expression on his face. Jack made a gesture with his hand.

"Just don't stand there Bobbie," his mother snapped, "turn round slowly. The gentlemen want to make up their minds as whether you're worth training as a pony boy. How can they do that if you stand still like a lump of useless lard."

The boy turned slowly exhibiting as Jack and William Smythe eyed him critically.

"What do you think William," Jack asked reaching out and pulling the child to him.

"Well Uncle Jack," William said judiciously, "the beast's confirmation isn't bad long legs, strong thighs, a deep chest for it's age and generally it's nicely put together. And," William dropped his voice confidentially, "his big brother's a twelve year old pony in Sir Robert's stable and I just happened to be up there yesterday afternoon when he was put between the shafts of a racing trap for the first time with another brat and put to run on the practice course. He went well for a beginner. Seven miles [11km] before they pulled the pair up and going at a good clip the whole time. The pair of them had their shoulders torn a bit from the whip but you expect that and he certainly could go. So this one here's out of good stock."

All the time William was speaking Jack was methodically examining the little slut. Checking the soles of his feet, running his hands over the brat's shins, prodding his thighs, checking between the legs and especially around the balls for ring worm, and so on.

Whether it was the mention of the whip or something Jack did something frightened Bobbie and he began to sob. Jack took no notice of this. He was after all too used to sobbing pauper brats to be bothered by such behaviour. He just continued his inspection of the slut; tipping it over his knee and parting its buttocks, no doubt to check that its sphincter was undamaged and that it was not infested with roundworm. The child's cries did however enrage its mother.

"You ungrateful little turd," she shouted, "after all the trouble and care your father and I have taken of you, trying to help you to make something worth while of your life by getting you selected as a pony boy and you start whimpering and making a fuss when kind Mr Wardle is checking you over. To think of the trouble we have taken toughening you up, keeping you naked and outside in the coldest wettest weather, seeing you had only one meal a day, your father making you run for hours a day, thrashing you when you slowed down, keeping you away from school so you haven't learnt to read and write and now you do this. I hope Mr Wardle whips you so hard that the skin is flayed from your miserable ungrateful carcass."

While this was going on Jack continued calmly with his examination of the naked boy. He sounded his chest, pinched his arm, squeezed the back of his neck, and checked, his teeth, behind his ears and the state of his scalp. Then gripping the child's chin in his left hand he tipped his head back and stared long and hard into his eyes.

"William?" he said and William stepped forward and in his turn spent a couple of minutes staring into Bobbie's eyes. Then Jack and William glanced at each other and nodded.

"Well Mrs Willis," Jack said seriously, "I've looked the little brute over and I think it's got the potential to make an adequate pony boy. If you like we can complete the formalities now."

"Oh thank you Mr Wardle my husband and I are most grateful." Mrs Willis gushed. Bobby's redoubled wailing suggested he was less enthused by Jack's decision.

"William," Jack said speaking briskly now business was in hand, "would you call up the standard indenture form for a pony boy on the computer and insert Mrs Willis's and Bobbie's names in the appropriate places and print it out for me. I showed you what to do a couple of days ago."

"Mrs Willis the other formalities, the branding and cutting, can take place a week this Sunday and the Sunday after but it is usual for the parent offering a boy for training as a pony to assist in the initial preparation of the brat. If you would just take Bobby onto your knee and get a firm grip of his hands. Thank you."

Jack opened the desk and took a long stainless steel needle like instrument from it together with a jar of iodine. While Mrs Willis drew her young son onto her lap and got a firm grip of his wrists Jack unscrewed the cap of the bottle and dipped the point of the instrument in the anti-sceptic. Then taking the sobbing boy's chin in his left hand he tipped his head to the right. He peered into the child's left ear and then very delicately inserted the point of the needle and jabbed. The volume Bobby's cries increased considerably. Unfazed by this Jack repeated the process with the child's right ear.

"One more thing Mrs Willis," he said reassuringly, "and then we are done."

He made no attempt to speak to Bobby for he knew the boy would not be able to hear him.

Jack turned back to the desk and took out of it a small flat case from this he extracted a scalpel. Bobby catching sight of it redoubled his screams and began to struggle desperately. Laughing Mark hurried to Mrs Willis's assistance as the naked boy squirmed and fought on her lap. The child was no match for two adults and soon he was firmly held in place. Jack gripped either side of his jaw with his left hand forcing his mouth open. Squinting in concentration he pushed the scalpel down into the boy's throat and made a small cut.

The boy's screams were joked into silence as blood momentarily flooded his throat.

"You can both let him go now," Jack said himself releasing his grip on the boy's jaws.

Bobby fell in a tumbled heap to the floor and lay there whimpering in distress.

"Now Mrs Willis if you would sign the indenture document here and William if you would put the slut in the small loose box on your way back to finish off Merlin Mark and I will set about finding your young brother."

Richard Smythe was a smaller slimmer version of his big brother. They found him standing in the middle of exercise yard lashing furiously at shins of a small pony boy. The pony boy, a long legged little beast looking to be no more than nine years old, was clearly panic stricken. He plunged desperately struggling against the long ribbon reigns that kept him within reach of the whip. Saliva bubbled round the bit in the brat's mouth and flecked his chest while blood streamed down the front of his shins where the skin had been torn by the whip. Richard was red in the face with rage and was shouting, as he jerked at the ribbon reigns with one hand and plied the long handled whip with the other.

"Having problems?" Jack asked quietly.

"The brute just won't do what I want. It's either stupid or stubborn or both. I'm not going to give up though."

"And what do you want it to do?"

"I want to teach it to trot properly and I've been trying for hours but it just won't."

"All right there's a trick to it. I'll show you. Let me have the reigns and the whip for a moment."

The boy surrendered the reigns and whip willingly enough. Indeed Mark suspected that he was getting tired of trying to fight the pony boy into submission and was glad to be rid of them. Anyway as there was a trick to the whole thing and he did not know it there was no dishonour in handing the problem over to somebody who did. Mark could only admire his old friend's tact and skill. Jack seemed to know instinctively how to handle boys whether it was a high spirited lad like Richard or a pauper slut. And now Jack was to exhibit his skill in dealing with the latter.

For a moment he stood absolutely still while the pony boy jerked at the reigns and tossed his head. Finding he was getting nowhere and no longer subjected to the torment of the lash across his shins the brat began slowly to quieten. Eventually he was standing, head bowed, trembling and panting but otherwise still. Jack spoke to him quietly and then gently shook the reigns. The boy's head came up and turned towards him.

"You must remember Richard that the brutes normally can't hear well enough to make out what we are saying but they can hear the tone we are using and they can pick up a great deal from that."

"Now you can see we have the animals attention. What do we want him to do? Trot forward? Very well.

Jack clicked his tongue loudly and jerked his head slightly to the left, which was the way the boy was facing, at the same time giving the reigns a further sharp shake. The boy began to move of in a rather reluctant trot.

"You see it can't understand what you're saying so you have to find other ways of telling it what you want it to do. Now I think we want to make it go a bit faster. Very well."

The whip snaked out its tip nipping at the boy's bottom raising a deep red welt on the smooth brown skin. The boy picked up his pace considerably.

"He isn't raising his knees high enough," Richard said.

"No, he isn't. So how do we make him? I'll show you."

Again the whip snaked out catching the boy on the back of the thighs a short distance above his knee at the same time calling out a sharp "hup".

"Hup," he cried again and the whip nipped at the back of the other thigh. "Hup" and the whip snapped again. "Hup"…… "Hup"…… "Hup"…… Soon the pony boy was trotting smartly round the ring lifting his knees high at every step.

"You want to have a go now Richard?"

"Take over from me then……… That's right very good…………… He's slowing down a bit giving him a cut on the rump to speed him up……… Now he's going faster but he's not lifting his knees as high……… What do you do.

"That's right at the back of the thighs above the knees."

"Speed him up a bit more…… Now his knees again higher… higher…… damn."

The boy crashed to his knees and the rolled onto his side.

"Cut him across the shoulders, the back, anywhere," Jack shouted urgently, "and again and again, lash him, lash him hard, you must get him back on his feet."

Again and again Richard brought the whip cracking down across the pony boy's body. The boy struggled back to his feet and began bent almost double to move forward in a staggering run.

"Don't let the runt get away with that. Straighten him up. Flick at his chest…… and again…… All right now speed him up give him it across the bum……… Good now get his knees up……… Very good you've got him moving again."

"What happened Uncle Jack."

"The brute went down because you cut too high up one thigh and the whip curved round the inside of it and its tip nipped the back of his balls."

"Remember Richard if ever a brat goes down, for whatever reason, you must use the whip on him and get him back on his feet as quickly as you can. Otherwise he'll always be doing it. The brat must know that if he goes down he'll be hurt a great deal more than if he stays on his feet. And the way you teach him that is you hit him with the whip as often as you can and as hard as you can till he gets back up."

"Do you think you can manage all right on your own now Richard……… Good then Mr Legg and I will be off. William will be taking the gig into town shortly to pick up Mr Legg's case from the station. You could go along with him for the trip and I think he wants you to help him give that gate boy of mine a thrashing for me."

"Oh thanks great Uncle Jack," a broad grin of delight at the prospect of inflicting a beating split the child's face.

"The best type of boys, Richard and William, both of them," Jack remarked as they walked from the stable yard. "I had thought……" He glanced back at Daniel padding along behind them and shook his head.

Jack led the way to the drawing room. It was a large sunny room with French-windows onto the terrace. These were open and through them came the scent of roses and the sound of birdsong.

Anne was sitting in an easy chair by a low table. It was clear to Mark that she had very much made the room her own. Previously the place, although always clean and usually tidy, Mrs Thomas saw that this was so, had a rough and ready rather masculine air, about it. If Anne had not been living in the house there would have been no flowers in the room, nor would there have been a lace cloth on the table and the tea service would have been something rather more mundane than the set of Royal Worcester porcelain that stood on the silver tray at her side.

The serving boys were different too. When Jack had had the house to himself there were just two serving boys dressed in old but spotlessly clean shirts cut off at the waist in the front and nothing else. The identity of the serving brats changed over the years, for Jack followed the traditional practice of selling such sluts to local farmers wanting well grown boys for their field gangs, as soon as they began to get hair on their bodies, but the shirts remained the same being passed on from boy to boy. Indeed it had amused Mark to see how over a period of years his shirt covered less and less of a boy's body. When a boy first began service in the house it might well hang down the back of his thighs almost to his knees. By the time his time in the house was drawing to an end it might well hardly cover his bottom. As the boys were taken into the house as need arose there was often great disparity in the size of the two sluts. It was not uncommon to have a ten year old whose spell of domestic service was just beginning paired with one five years older whose time was drawing to an end.

All now was different. Now there were four choice twelve-year old sluts carefully matched in size and colouring. They were all dressed alike in loose sleeveless tunics cut to fall just below the crutch and the crease of the bottom when standing erect. When a brat moved however the tunic would ride up his body affording tantalising glimpses of the more intimate parts of their bodies. Split on each side to the hip the tunics were white with thick blue vertical stripes that accentuated the length of the brats' legs and the jut of their round little rumps. All together the four pretty boys, their hair brushed until it shone, their slim young bodies oiled and scented were fitting ornaments to a lady's drawing room. The only concession to Jack's interests was that their skimpy tunics were in his racing colours.

One thing however apparently remained constant. The discipline under which the brats served appeared to be as strict and as direct as ever. For on the silver tray beside the porcelain tea pot, ready to Anne's hand, Mark saw an elegant ivory handled martinet with perhaps nine or a dozen thin leather thongs tightly knotted towards their ends designed to seek out and sting the tenderest parts of an erring sluts body.

"Anne," Jack said as they entered the room, "this is my old school friend Mark Legg that I have spoken to you about so often in the past."

"I am very pleased to meet you Mark. Please sit down and have a cup of tea, milk and sugar? It is Earl Grey."

"In that case neither milk nor sugar thank you," Mark replied seating himself.

"Jack has indeed spoken a great deal about you" Anne continued as she poured the tea. "I do hope you will undertake the first penetration of that slut of mine. From what Jack has told me about you, you are just the sort of person I would wish to undertake that chore. I am sure that being penetrated by you will be marked as indelibly on his mind as the charity boy brand is burnt into his hip. And while the brute is lazy and stupid he's quite a pretty little whore and is I am sure depraved enough to be longing for man's cock inside him."

"I am looking forward to it," Mark assured her.

Anne finished pouring the tea and one of the serving boys took it from the tray, while bending down to do so affording a brief glimpse of his sweet little, bottom. A second boy approached Mark with a side plate while the remaining two moved forward, one offering a plate of sandwiches, the other a sponge cake. They moved without apparent instruction in what appeared to be a carefully practised and choreographed series of movements. But it was not it seemed sufficiently thoroughly practised. Mark placed two cucumber and two egg and cress sandwiches on his plate, he did not usually eat much at tea time but he found the presence of the brats gazing hungry eyed at the food did wonders for his own appetite. Then the slut holding the sandwich plate stepped backwards and knocked into the boy holding the plate of cakes. A small cup cake with white butter icing was knocked from the plate. It fell to the floor landing on the carpet the icing side downwards.

There was a moment of total silence and then the luckless brat carrying the plate of cakes began to sob.

"You clumsy little turd," Anne shouted angrily, "pick that cake up and bring it here."

"Not with your fingers," she snarled in a cold rage as the boy picked the cake from the floor the tunic riding up the back of his body to just short of his waste affording the watching adults a clear view of his deeply tanned tight little bottom. "I don't want to hold something that has been soiled by your filthy fingers you stupid lump of cat's shit."

"Put the cake plate down on the table," Anne's voice was crackling with impatience and anger.

"Pick up a side plate."

"Put the cake on that."

"Pick the lumps of icing off the carpet with your fingers."

"God they're stupid ignorant little brutes. You have to tell them what to do all the time. No initiative, no sense, not a thought or an idea in their heads."

"Now come here and bring the plate with you."

"Daisy, Daisy," Anne called.

A fat Golden Labrador wandered into the room and stood looking about itself expectantly. Anne snatched the plate from the trembling brat and tipped the cake onto the floor in front of the dog. The Labrador wolfed the delicacy down in one gulp and then hopefully sniffed the carpet in search of crumbs.

"Give her your fingers to lick you know how she likes icing," Anne commanded impatiently adding speaking to the adults. "I've got to make sure the brat doesn't get a crumb of the cake or the thieving tyke will be 'accidentally' dropping food all the time just to fill it's worthless guts – there's no limit to the greed of these animals."

"And now that the mess that your criminal carelessness created has been cleaned up we must make sure that you are more careful in future."

Anne picked up the ivory handled scourge from the tray beside her. Holding it in her right hand she ran the knotted thongs through her left hand as she spoke. The boy whimpered softly.

"Well take off your tunic, fold it up neatly, and put it on the chair by the door."

The boy pulled his tunic off over his head and padded on bare feet across the room. Mark watched him wondering at how something so mean and debased as a pauper boy could contrive to look so attractive. The brat looked nice enough in his tunic but naked his lithe young body seemed almost to sing. The slut was beautiful and, and this knowledge filled the room with tension and excitement, he was utterly and completely vulnerable. Mark could tell they were all touched by this. Anne whose eyes glittered cruelly as she played with the scourge in her hands. Jack sitting bolt upright his lips twisted in a tight mirthless smile. The other three serving boys and Daniel, awaiting their fellow slut's punishment with uneasy excitement. His own mouth was dry with excitement and he felt his cock begin to stiffen.

The boy placed his tunic, neatly folded as he had been ordered on the chair against the wall. He turned and began to make his reluctant way towards his nemesis. He was a little unsteady on his feet. It seemed that his knees were not working properly and his movements lacked co-ordination. Why, Mark wondered, does a boy always look more attractive with tears in his eyes?

"Get a move on you miserable little runt," Anne commanded impatiently, "I've got other things to do apart from thrashing you."

Jack, helpful as ever jumped from his chair. He landed a hefty kick on the brat's bum sending him staggering forward the last few feet.

Anne lent forward. She flicked the martinet upwards so that the tips of its leather thongs painfully caressed the wretched boy's testicles.

"You know what you have to do don't you turd?" she demanded raising her voice to be heard over the child's whimpering.

"Yes Missis Anne Ma'am" the boy whimpered.

"Then do it."

The snivelling slut moved his feet well apart. Then, bending slightly forward he reached behind himself and placing a hand on either buttock pulled the cheeks of his bottom as far apart as he could. Mark could see the washer at the top of his plug protruding from his anus.

"Hang on Anne," Jack said, "I'll just get the plug out of him for you."

He stepped forward and placing his left hand flat on one cheek of the boy's bottom took hold of the ring at the top of the plug and pulled it out of brat's bum.

"Have to get that out of the brute," he explained to Mark, "to allow the tongues of the martinet to touch him up in there."

"Anne I'll hold the tyke while you hit him," Jack said being his usual helpful self and slipping his hand inside the brat's collar at the back of his neck.

"Thank you and could you just check that he's holding his bottom as wide open as possible. You know how the cowardly little animals always try to cheat."

"It looks all right to me this time," Jack reported leaning back to check.

"Can you imagine," he continued straightening and speaking over his shoulder to Mark, "either of the Smythe boys allowing themselves to be treated in this way? They'd die first. It's only charity scum like this that would submit to it."

Mark was sitting almost directly behind the boy. Through his spread legs he could see Anne preparing to deliver the first stroke of the scourge. She lowered it until its leather thongs were resting on the floor and then she struck viciously upwards. The blow was well judged. The tongues of the scourge curled about the boy's balls tearing and biting at their backs and the tender flesh at the top of his legs on either side of them. Letting out a shrill screech the brat leapt into the air as though his body had been convulsed by a massive electric shock.

Laughing Jack kept a firm hold of the boy's collar as he twisted and squirmed in his grasp his bare feet scrabbling on the floor. In time the child's stilled and he was left bent double supported by Jack's grip on his collar.

"Come on filth back on your feet now," Jack ordered hauling on the slut's collar and helping the boy to straighten up by driving his knee into his face.

Anne waited until the boy was back in position and then she struck again. This time the knotted thongs struck further back between the boy's legs nipping at his perineum and his inner thighs. Once again the boy screamed and would have fallen were it not for Jack's supporting hand grasping his collar.

Mark realised with a sense of sick fascination what was to come next.

"Just check again he's holding his bottom open for me would you Jack please?" Anne asked confirming his suspicions.

"Yes I don't think he could pull it wider apart," Jack replied after leaning back to check.

"Missis Anne, Ma'am please," the boy whined showing that he too suspected what was to come although what grounds he had for hoping so stern and upright a disciplinarian as Anne would be deflected from doing her duty by the pleas of a mere charity boy Mark could not imagine. Indeed so comical was the idea that she would in anyway relent that Mark and shortly afterwards Anne and Jack began to laugh heartily.

Then as she was still laughing Anne lashed upwards once again. This time the tips of the scourge licked down into the brat's crack. The boy's cries and the contortions of his body as the individual tongues bit deep were more frenzied than ever.

Anne cut upward with the scourge six further times striking in turn at the slut's balls, perineum and hole, before she brought its punishment to an end.

"It looks as though someone's forced a freshly boiled egg up the stupid brute's hole," Anne remarked as she watched the boy drag himself splay legged across the room to recover his tunic. The three adults all burst out laughing again. The boy was indeed a comical sight with his odd walk, tear and snot stained face, and the twin smears of blood on the inside of his thighs from the flesh torn by the scourge. While the idea of stuffing a boiling hot egg into a slut struck them as hilariously funny.

"The thoughtless brute has bled on my trousers," Jack said still laughing, "if you'll both excuse me I'll go and change them. I'll be back in a moment."

"Certainly Jack," Anne said pouring herself a refreshing cup of tea after her recent exertions, "but tell me before you go how that slut of mine made out this afternoon."

"What Daniel," Jack said pausing on his way to the door, "well enough really dear, except the stupid lump of pig's shit with criminal carelessness left Mark's Times behind on the train."

"You stupid slug," Anne raged starting to her feet and still holding the tea pot in her right hand, advanced on the cowering boy, "Can't you do anything right. I and your kind Uncle Jack take infinite pains trying to beat some sense into your idle ignorant carcass and all you do you putrid little turd is to disgrace us both with your utterly self indulgent behaviour. I wish I had smothered you at birth and fed you to the pigs. At least you would have been some use then and you wouldn't now be alive to plague us both with your useless existence."

"I'm sorry Mummy," Daniel wailed.

"Sorry! Sorry!" Anne screamed, "What's the point of being sorry. You…"

She paused lost for words and then clearly deciding that this was a time for action not words. She smashed the teapot down on the top of the sobbing boy's head. The fine porcelain shattered. Tea leaves and near boiling water flowed down over the boy's head and bare shoulders. A shard of broken china tore the child's scalp. Daniel stood in the centre of the room, wailing as the scalding water tinged with blood from the cut in his head flowed down over his shoulders and chest.

Jack quick as ever to help when a crisis arose leapt on the boy.

"Good God you selfish brute," he shouted, "don't stand there feeling sorry for yourself. Just think of the mess you're making on the carpet."

He grabbed the brat by his collar and gripping the boy between the legs with his other hand he lifted him from the floor and hurled him bodily out through the open French window. There was a soft thud as Daniel landed on the paved terrace followed by renewed and ever louder screaming.

"Mrs Thomas, Mrs Thomas," Jack shouted at the top of his voice, "that stupid turd Daniel has broken the Royal Worcester tea pot with his head. He's out on the terrace. Can you collect him from their his screams are disturbing us. You needn't beat him much. Mr Legg will look after that for us when he fucks the slut this evening. Just clean the whore up and put him in the blue bedroom ready for Mr Legg to enjoy."

"Oh Jack," Anne cried "I'm so sorry spoiling your mother's wonderful tea service."

"Don't think about it Anne dear. Of course you hit that useless lump of excrement with the nearest thing to hand. He is so ungrateful and lazy. He brought it on himself. If he hadn't been so criminally negligent to have forgotten Mark's Times you wouldn't have been obliged to hit him. It's he not you that is responsible for breaking the teapot. We must rely on Mark here to thrash some sense into the turd because our best efforts seem to have failed."

"Yes," Anne said turning to look up into Mark's face with a sweetly appealing expression, "we are relying on you. Please do your best. Flay every square inch of skin from my son's carcass if you can. It is clear Jack and I have been far too lenient and soft with him up to now."

"Well," Jack said, "you must excuse me for the moment. I'll just go and change my trousers."

"I might as well take this slut to Mrs Thomas while I'm at it," he added, "it's bleeding so much from being scourged it'll get on the carpet as well unless we get her to do something to stem the blood. You've no need for him for the moment Anne?"

"Yes take him away Jack," Anne replied.

"Come on. You won't need your tunic you stupid little tart," Jack said grabbing the still naked boy by the arm and dragging him roughly from the room.

It seemed to Mark listening to the receding sound of the child's sobs as he was hauled away that he was not looking forward to receiving first aid from Jack's excellent house keeper.

"Such a nice man and so kind," Anne remarked smiling fondly after Jack had left the room. "You noticed Mark how quickly he reassured me about breaking the tea pot on Daniel's head? And so reticent too. He's going to fuck that slut but he was too modest to say so."

"I thought he was taking him to Mrs Thomas."

"Oh that was just an excuse. He gets so excited when he sees me use the scourge on a slut. It always gets him going and he says fucking a boy whose anus and hole has been nipped by the knotted thongs is an unforgettable experience. The pain from the cuts as the brat is penetrated livens him up like nothing else."

A series of loud shrieks sounded from the depths of the house.

"There you are," Anne remarked with a smile, "Jack's entering the slut now. You should try the same thing when you fuck Daniel tonight."

Chapter 4

As he opened the door to his bedroom he heard a slight rustle of movement from within. He pushed the door full open. The brat pen, in this case a simple square of green matting made of hundreds of short, dagger sharp plastic blades, was situated against the wall opposite the window. On this mat knelt Daniel in the somewhat rigid and stylised position required of such filth, hands down at his sides, knees spread wide, balls and bottom pressed down onto the plastic spikes, back straight, shoulders strained back, head bowed. He gave the impression that he had been there ever since he had been brought to the room by Mrs Thomas, after having his cuts and scalds dressed, some four hours ago. But Mark knew that pauper brats were sly, dishonesty came naturally to them and there was that rustle of movement as he opened the door. He strongly suspected the little tyke had been out of the brat pen up to goodness knows what sort of mischief even, perhaps, stealing a drink of water from the tap in the bath room. The day was hot enough in all conscience and no doubt the slut would have been thirsty after having to run the six miles [10km] into Muggleton and back behind the pony boy trap.

This was only a suspicion but that would have been usually enough to get the boy a bloody bottom, for it was the universal and wholly sensible practice to act on an assumption of guilt when dealing with pauper trash. Furthermore it was generally accepted in the Vale of Dingle that for every time a brat was beaten for something it hadn't done it was certain that there must be half a dozen occasions when it had escaped being beaten for something it had done.

However circumstances were somewhat exceptional on this occasion. Mark had only a limited amount of time available to change for dinner and it would be the height of discourtesy to turn up late for that meal for such a trivial reason as beating a charity boy. In addition he was looking forward to first flogging and then fucking the brat after dinner. To give it the thrashing it deserved now would only detract from its ability to endure abuse after dinner and thus from Mark's enjoyment then. It would be, he decided, best simply to ensure for the moment that the little brute behaved itself properly and to postpone its thrashing until he had time to do the job in a leisurely and enjoyable manner.

Anyway Mark was hot and sticky after his journey and the first thing he was going to do was to have a shower. He pulled his clothes off and leaving them heaped on the floor strolled naked over to the bathroom door. Although Daniel remained kneeling with bowed head Mark was sure the temptation to get a glimpse of the shaft that his bottom was going soon to have to accommodate would be too much for the slut. He was also sure that to a young boy facing the imminent prospect of having it hammered into his rump, his man's cock, rooted in its forest of coarse red hair, would looked a formidable enough weapon although in reality nothing out of the ordinary in size. He deliberately passed close to the Daniel on his way to the bathroom. The boy shivered, feeling the draft of Mark's passing and getting wind of the rank bodily odours from his unwashed crutch. Mark left the door open while he was having his shower so that the brat would have more opportunity to appreciate the size and length of his prick, now semi-tumescent from excitement.

He dried himself off, standing less than a foot away from Daniel's face, using his towel vigorously on his genitals, giving the boy a further opportunity to see what he would eventualy have to take up his bum. Then ignoring the selection of canes resting against the side of the fireplace he turned his attention to the wooden tray on the mantelpiece. Placed there, with typical thoughtfulness for the convenience of guests, were a variety of restraints, manacles straps and other disciplinary aides. Choosing a plastic tie he stood a moment looking down at the kneeling boy.

Mrs Thomas had done a good job of patching the slut up, which was only to be expected from one with so much experience in dressing torn and broken brat flesh. There was some dried blood in Daniel's hair from the tear in his scalp. His body, as was usual with pauper boys, was marked with a number of angry welts, while only the passage of time would allow the dark bruises that mottled the light chocolate of his skin to fade to nothing. In addition his shoulders and chest were blotched with scarlet scald marks. But over, all considering the blows and kicks and general ill treatment that had been inflicted on the little brute that day so far, he was in remarkably good shape. This was partly, no doubt, attributable to Mrs Thomas's skills but mainly to the tough but wholesome regime imposed on Daniel and the rest of the pauper scum by their responsible and caring guardians, for young healthy flesh heals fast and bruises fade quickly from it.

Grabbing Daniel by his ear and twisting it viciously Mark forced the boy to his feet. Transferring his grip to one thin wrist he twisted the brat's arm behind his back. Reaching forward he got hold of Daniel's other wrist. He pulled them together behind the boy's back and with a sharp tug secured them with the plastic tie. Daniel caught his breath as the tie bit into his flesh. Mark smile grimly, the sudden pain, he thought, would serve as a useful reminder to the little turd as to who was the master. Stepping back he landed a sharp back handed flip across the boys taught little rump.

"Get back down on the mat filth," he ordered. These were the first words he had said to Daniel that day. You did not waste your breath talking to pauper trash when blows and kicks would serve to make your wishes known and would be better understood and more quickly obeyed.

"I want your bottom and balls right down on the ground shit bag," Mark grated, grasping the boy by his shoulders forcing his bottom down onto the sharp plastic blades of the mat. He deliberately dug his fingertips into the scalded flesh of the boy's bare shoulders while he ground the slut's rump and balls on the sharp spikes of the plastic carpet. Then, still gripping Daniel's shoulders, he kicked at the inside of his knees spreading the child's legs even further apart.

Mark checked that the carafe on the bedside table was full of water. Holding Daniel's head by the chin he made sure the boy's head was properly bowed before carefully balancing the carafe on its crown. With his hands tied tightly behind his back it was impossible for Daniel to move without dislodging the carafe precariously balanced on his head and once dislodged it was impossible for him to replace it there. Mark did not bother to tell the boy what he would do to him if he came back after dinner and found the carafe gone. That detail could safely, he thought, be left to the brat's imagination. It was enough that the boy now had to maintain his strained posture on the cruel mat as rigidly as a guardsman on duty outside Buckingham Palace until he returned to the room after dinner. That would be at the least two and a half hours away and it was easy to imagine what agonies of cramp would be racking the little brute's body by then. Daniel would probably long before then be praying for him to return and release him from his suffering, although the slut would know that Mark's return would only mark the beginning of another phase his martyrdom.

Smiling at this thought Mark dressed while Daniel knelt silent and motionless apart from the gentle movement of his chest as he breathed. As Mark closed the bedroom door behind himself on the way downstairs for dinner he though he heard a slight noise come from the boy something halfway between a moan and a whimper.

"Anne will be down in a minute," Jack said rising as he entered the drawing room, "what would you like to drink Whisky, G and T, sherry, glass of beer……? We'll sit down a little later than usual as I've asked some people in so we can take our time."

"Whisky with just a dash of water please Jack. You know how I like it. Who are your guests? Anyone I know?"

"I don't think so. Though you may know of one of them – a boy called Nicky – there was a good deal of publicity about him in the press recently. He had been wrongly sent to Ovingdean the Home of Correction that our Home Secretary, Mister Plonkit, set up for delinquent boys under the age of fourteen. I met his stepfather while having a pint in the Duke one night last week and got chatting. Excellent fellow with a sensible robust attitude to bringing up boys. Which was what started the trouble in the first place. Interfering social workers (this refers back to my story Into care that can be found in this archive) took the boy into care and then somehow or other he finished up in Ovingdean. Would be there still were it not for the press, first his local paper The Clarion and then the national press took the matter up."

"I read about it. Ovingdean is pretty tough I understand?"

"Yes I believe it is. It's not a prison. We're a civilised country and don't put children in prison. It's a home and rehabilitation centre for boys with anti-social tendencies. So any youngster that causes problems can be sent there. He doesn't have to have committed any specific offence and it's tough because boys of that sort respond to such treatment."

"I don't always agree with Mr Plonkit's ideas. His plan to discourage asylum seekers coming to the UK by leaving them to starve in the streets was perhaps not fully thought through but his Houses of Correction for delinquent children seem an excellent idea. A bit hard on the boy Nicky though being sent there when he had done nothing wrong."

"Oh I don't know, a bit of rough treatment doesn't do a boy any harm. Toughens him up. I want to find out as much as I can about the regime in Ovingdean. I think we maybe spoiling our Charity boys."

"But how does the boy and his step-father come to be in Muggleton?"

"I asked him that. Apparently there is a sort of mentoring system in place for boys on their release from Ovingdean. Makes sense really, after spending all that time and effort knocking some sense into them it doesn't make sense just to turn them loose on the community and have them go back to their old ways in short order. Boys memories are very short and the mentors are supposed to be there to remind them what will be done to them if they fall out of line again. I got the impression though from Brian, he's Nicky's stepfather, that really the main concern of the mentors is not with the boys but with the parents, to give them the confidence to impose discipline on their young. I must say though it didn't seem to me that Brian had any need of any encouragement in that area. Anyway he and his wife got on so well with Nicky's mentor, an excellent young lady called Angela Thompson that they've come down to the Vale of Dingle with her and her brother and his family for a holiday. They've rented the old game keepers cottage behind the eighty acres wood for a fortnight."

"That's a pretty small place for such a large party isn't it?" Mark remembered the keeper's cottage from his boyhood visits when old Mr Campbell was the keeper and in the summer sometimes took Jack and himself rabbiting. "Five grown ups I assume and however many children they all have."

"Five children, all boys I understand, ranging from six to fourteen years, but they sleep in the old gun-dog kennels. There's a good sound concrete floor and the boys squash in together to keep warm. I gather they're even allowed a blanket between them to lie on so they're very comfortable. A lot of the locals make their own boys sleep out in the summer and of course most pauper boys are outside the whole year round. Good for them – mustn't spoil the brutes – only leads to trouble."

"I remember the cottage as only one up and one down."

"It was but when old Campbell died on us we built an extension to it for holiday lettings and it's worked quite well. The Vale of Dingle seems to be quite a popular place for people to take holidays and we get a lot of repeat bookings. The only problem is with the pauper brats sneaking down there and begging for food. We've put notices up asking the visitors not to feed the sluts and to beat any who bother them but it doesn't always work."

"Ah here's Jane and I think our guests are arriving as well.

Because of the number of individuals involved and the modern habit of referring to people by their first names and of dispensing with formal introductions Mark expected to find the next few minutes rather confusing. Indeed so far as the adults were concerned this was so. It was only after five minutes or so of loud talk, laughter and confused introductions that he had them more or less sorted out. There were two married couples Mary and Brian Roberts and Brenda and John Thompson. That at least was clear but which of the two dinner jacketed males was Brian Roberts and which John Thompson and which of the two ladies in evening dresses were Mary and which Brenda he was still a trifle unsure. There was also an extremely pretty younger woman Angela, sister to John Thompson.

The boys though presented no such problem. They filed, the oldest and tallest first, quietly into the room and lined themselves up against the wall just inside the door. They stood waiting silently as the grown ups talked and laughed and shook hands with each other.

"Now" one of the men said loudly over the social hubbub "we'd better introduce the boys to you."

This had the effect of making all the grown ups in the room fall silent and turn to look at the boys who shuffling their bare feet hung their heads bashfully. Mark thought the contrast between the adults, in their formal clothes the men in black dinner jackets and stiff white shirts, the woman in their long evening dresses, with the five bare-footed boys dressed only in the skimpiest of skimpy white cotton shorts extremely piquant. Their shorts, spotless and brilliant white as they were, although they tightly hugged their slim hips, were vastly superior to the rags that were the best for which a pauper boy could hope.

The man paused perhaps to give them all an opportunity of inspecting the boys and indeed they were well worth looking at. Mark ran his eyes down the line of obviously nervous boys from the small six-year-old furthest from the door to the well-grown fourteen-year-old standing just inside the room. Their slim deeply tanned bodies spoke of hours spent outside in all weathers engaged in active play or work. Apart from the scraped knees and the bramble torn shins, the normal badges of an active boyhood, the occasional dark bruise that marred their lithe young bodies spoke of a firm but not excessive disciplinary regime. The only exception to this was the fair-haired lad standing second from the door. His shins and firm young thighs, the tightly drawn skin of his chest, were all ribbed with dark weals and marked with deep bruising that stained his nut brown skin with colours ranging from blue through dark purple to a sickly yellowish green at their edges. These marks apart from one or two at the top of his thighs just below his shorts looked fairly old. This, thought Mark, must be Nicky still bearing evidence on his body of his stay at the Ovingdean boys' home.

"The boy just inside the door is my son Adam Roberts," the man said confirming to Mark both his own identity and that of the dark haired boy. "He is fourteen years old and not a bad lad provided he gets an occasional clout on the side of his head."

"Say how do you do to our host and hostess and to Mr Legg Adam."

Adam stepped smartly forward.

"How do you do Mrs Wardle Miss?"

"How do you do Mr Wardle Sir?"

"How do you do Mr Legg Sir?"

He said in what seemed to Mark to be a well-drilled routine. He held out his hand to each in turn accompanying each handshake with an open but respectful smile while looking the person he was addressing straight in the eye.

"The next one is mine," Mrs Roberts said, "Nicholas Roberts he's a bit nervous since he's come back from a spell at Ovingdean but I must say he is a much more humble and biddable child since he has been there. Nicky step forward and say how do you do?"

There was a few seconds pause while Nicky hung his head shifting from foot to foot. For a moment Mark wondered if the child was going to funk his duty and what then would happen to him but a firm push on his bottom from Adam made him step forward and he managed to mumble out his greetings in an embarrassed and frightened whisper. Mark felt a small warm hand briefly touch his and he looked down onto the top of the boy's fair head as Nicky kept his gaze resolutely fixed on the ground.

The ordeal over the boy returned to his place in the line and sidled up as close as he could to Adam.

"Now my three," John Thompson said cheerfully, "Tommy nine years old, Neal seven and the smallest Peter six."

"I may be the smallest but I'm big enough to get the cane," Peter piped up drawing a roar of laughter from the grown-ups.

"And you're due for a thrashing tomorrow," his father replied sharply. Peter's face crumpled at this news and the grown ups laughed even louder, amused by the child's obvious distress.

The three Thompson boys then paid their respects, with Peter getting a good deal of good-natured teasing about his promised beating. Anne asked him if his Daddy beat him on his bare bottom and when the boy replied that he did she asked if she might come to watch. John Thompson interrupted his youngest son to say that they were all welcome to attend the performance and it was arranged that they should call at the Game Keepers Cottage after breakfast the next day on their way to the races to watch the boy being caned. Jack in his usual jolly way asked whether the cane was a special light one or the standard heavy duty one that was used on the pauper boys. Mark wanted to know how many strokes Peter thought he was going to get and whether he was going to be a brave boy and not cry. These and other similar questions soon reduced the little fellow to tears increasing still further the merriment of his elders and betters. It was so far as the adults at least were concerned a very good humoured and light-hearted group that a few minutes later seated themselves around the great mahogany table in the manor's dining room.

The serving boys set finger bowls in front of the adults and brought them plates piled with langoustines. Mark glanced down the table to the far end where the boys were. They sat silent, straight backed, in their chairs, neither their hands nor elbows on the table, their eyes cast modestly down. He thought he caught Adam casting a quick hungry glance at his own plate.

"The boys aren't getting anything then?" he asked as he pealed the skin from a langoustine noting with approval that the flesh was not watery. Trust old Jack to get them fresh and not to put up with deep frozen supplies he thought.

"No, such delicacies as these would only be wasted on them," Mary Roberts said. "Mind you they must be pretty hungry by now. They usually have their tea at five thirty but we didn't give them anything today in case it spoiled their appetite for later."

"Good discipline making them wait," Jack remarked approvingly from his place at the top of the table.

"Mind you," he added "they won't be as hungry as this little turd here," catching a passing serving boy a hard open handed slap on the side of one firm young thigh. "Had its last meal at six in the morning and will have its next if it's lucky sometime about eleven this evening. Else it'll have to wait till tomorrow morning. The great danger with brats is that you over feed them. The greedy little sods'll eat anything you put in front of them. I suspect tough we're spoiling our brutes even now……… less food and more stick is what they need I think."

"Nicky," Jack called down the table, "you've just been to Ovingdean what was it like."

Nicky looked up the table at the group of grinning adult faces and panicked. He tried to reply but could only manage a hoarse inarticulate whisper.

"Speak up Nicky," his mother said sharply, "it's rude to whisper."

Under the table Adam's hand brushed against the side of his thigh. Encouraged by his friend's touch Nicky tried again.

"It was horrible Sir. They beat us a lot and worked us very hard and we had very little to eat."

"Sounds ideal for a bunch of anti-social brats," Jack said heartily. "How many meals a day did you get Nicky and at what times in the day."

"Just one Sir, sometime in the afternoon."

"And the charity scum get two meals the greedy little animals." Jack remarked. "I always thought we were spoiling the brutes. That decides it, its one meal a day from now on for my brats and I'll suggest that should be applied to all charity stock at the next meeting of trustees."

"So you didn't enjoy your time at Ovingdean?" Jack asked turning his attention back to Nicky.

"No Sir," Nicky replied in a voice just over a whisper. He remembered the long days spent working naked in the fields, the constant beatings, the hunger, the cold and the filth. He began to shiver uncontrollably.

Jack looked down the table and grinned wolfishly at the trembling boy.

"Then you'd better behave yourself Nicky," he said softly, "because if you don't your Mummy will send you straight back there."

"Yes," Angela chimed in; "once you've been there they can take you back any time. I've got the principal's telephone number, Mr Adams, you remember him I am sure Nicky? Very few boys who go to Overdean ever forget Mr Adams. One telephone call to him and he'll send a couple of his guards round to collect you."

"Mummy you wouldn't send me back there would you?"

"Oh yes I would Nicky like a shot. You just step out of line and I'll be asking Angela to make that telephone call."

"Mister Ellis would be glad to see you back there I'm sure," Angela, said naming Nicky's chief persecutor during the time he was in care, with a smile.

Nicky burst into tears.

"They're only teasing you Nicky," Adam whispered.

Unfortunately Brian Roberts spotted him doing so.

What did you say Adam," he roared at his son.

"Just that you were only teasing him Dad."

"Whispering is very bad manners. Furthermore I'm not going to tolerate you having secrets behind my back and who do you think you are, you insolent boy, to comment on the behaviour of your elders and betters. Take your shorts off and get up on that chair with your hands behind your head. I'll deal with you after I've had my dinner."

"Dad," Adam protested. He was fourteen now. Almost grown up himself. He was used to running around naked with Brian and Mary and it just seemed natural to continue doing so when they went off on holiday with the Thompsons and their boys. But to be made to strip in front of three strangers, Mister Wardle, Mister Legg, and worst of all Mrs Wardle, and the charity boys, though he knew they didn't count and goodness knows who else, it just wasn't right.

"Adam," Brian roared again rising to his feet.

"The cane's by the fire place," Jack said helpfully.

Brian snatched it up and advanced on his son.

"Dad please," Adam said beginning to get up to meet his father.

Brian seized the boy by his ear and twisting it viciously yanked him out of his chair. Adam scrambled to his feet forced to bend double by his father's grip on his ear. Still keeping a tight hold of his son Brian cut him hard across the shins with the cane.

"Get your shorts off now and then get up on the chair as I told you," Brian ordered releasing the boy's ear and cutting him again hard across the shins.

Adam's hands scrabbled desperately at his shorts while his father towered over him the cane raised threateningly. He dragged the waste band of the shorts down over his hips and let them fall about his ankles. Naked, for none of the boys were allowed underpants, he began to scramble up onto the seat of the chair. In doing so his bottom presented an irresistible target to his father who brought the cane slashing down across it.

Brian directed the cut into the crease of Adam's rump. A stripe there would burn for a long time and would serve as a constant reminder to the boy of what he was to expect at the end of dinner.

Adam was now standing unsteadily on the chair.

"Get your hands behind your head," Adam snapped and reinforced his order by cracking the cane across the front of the boy's thighs scoring an angry red wheal across the smooth brown skin.

"I can't imagine what the boy is fussed about. He's got very little to hide down there," Anne remarked in a loud clear voice causing all the grown ups to hoot with laughter.

Brian waited for the noise to die away.

"You," he said addressing the naked boy who stood on the chair his hands clasped behind his head, red faced with shame and embarrassment, "will stay up there while the rest of us have our dinners. Then I will beat you. I will beat you very hard. You will get nothing to eat but you can spend your time until then considering and, I hope, regretting your appalling behaviour. You have behaved disgracefully. You have shown no respect to me. You have set an appalling example to the younger boys. You are a sly deceitful ill-mannered boy. I will not put up with you whispering behind my back."

"Dad I didn't………," Adam began but was cut short by Brian brining the cane hissing down across the front of his thighs once again.

"Be quiet," Brian commanded, "don't you dare argue with me."

Adam choked back his tears. He loved his father and wanted to please him. He hadn't meant to argue with him only to tell him that he hadn't meant any harm certainly not to deceive him.

"How many strokes are you going to give the boy?" Jack asked.

"Quite a few I hope," Angela said, "I don't take kindly to being told I'm 'only joking' by a mere boy. Insolent little brute."

"Gross impertinence," Mary Roberts chimed in, "he said the same of me and that's worse because I am his step mother. No respect at all. If you don't give him a bloody bottom I most certainly will."

Brian thought for a moment.

"Insolent," he said thoughtfully, "impertinent, deceitful, all serious character faults that require vigorous correction. Being the eldest boy the others look to him for an example and he has failed them badly. Four strokes for insolence, four strokes for impertinence, four strokes for deceitfulness and a further four for setting a bad example. I hope that doesn't strike you as excessively lenient but I don't want to overdo things either."

"Only sixteen cuts," Mary exclaimed. "He's a big boy. He could take twice as many and still be able to walk. That's letting him off a bit lightly I think."

"I think so too," Angela said, "but then we can always give him a few as well. And maybe it'd be better done back at the cottage. We don't want to get blood on the car seats. Though he'll bleed anyway with sixteen."

Nicky who knew only too well from his own experience the scorching lung-emptying pain that a cane biting into tender boy's flesh inflicts reached out and under cover of the table and placed his hand on Adam's bare foot. There was nothing more he could do to support or comfort his friend.

"Talking about bleeding," John Thompson said braking into the conversation, "someone's given that gate boy of yours a good hiding. His shoulders and bottom have been really shredded."

"That'll be Doctor Smythe's boys," Jack explained with a benevolent smile. "I asked them to thrash the little brute for me. I'm glad to hear they did the job so thoroughly. I was sure I could rely on them. I must remember to see that whoever is sent down to unlock the boy from the gate takes a tube of wound powder with him to treat the open cuts."

"What do you use on your brats after they have been beaten?" Angela asked.

"Oh wound powder on the open cuts. Similar to the powder you use on horses. It stanches the bleeding and acts as an anti-sceptic at the same time and we lso use some sort of salve for the bruising but we don't usually bother about that very much. Just let nature take its course. They're healthy young animals and the bruising fades fast enough," Jack replied.

"I ask because the Matron at Ovingdean uses a special ointment a chemist friend of hers has invented, a mixture of iodine, strong mustard and horse liniment. It seems to work very well and the brats squeal in a most entertaining way when it is applied to their stripes. I wonder which works better, your wound powder or the Ovingdean ointment. It would be interesting to know."

"Our brats howl a bit when the wound powder is put on them," Jack remarked in an off hand sort of way and then continued in a keener manner. "It would be interesting to see which worked best though."

"I've got some of the ointment in the car," John Thompson remarked. "Always carry it about to use on any of the boys we happen to thrash. We could try an experiment. Thoroughly cut up a couple of sluts' rumps with the cane, apply ointment to one, powder to the other, and see which heals quicker. But there's a problem. To make the experiment valid we'd need to start with two boys with bottoms in a similar condition, really I suppose totally unmarked."

"That would indeed be a problem," Jack said judiciously, "I doubt if there's a single indentured brat in the Vale of Dingle with a bum that doesn't have a bruise or two on it and the same applies to free boys as well. I suppose if anyone knows where one or rather two such rare birds could be found it's my house keeper Mrs Thomas, excellent woman as she is."

"You," he snapped at a serving boy, "go and find Mrs Thomas and ask her if she would be good enough to come and see me here. Quickly you idle little brute."

Mrs Thomas was a plump rather motherly looking woman dressed in black with a spotless white apron covering her ample bosom. She stood just inside the dining room door listening deferentially as Jack explained about their proposed experiment. As the explanation progressed a smile flickered across her face.

"Why Sir," she said when Jack had finished speaking, "this is most fortunate. I know exactly where I can get just the things you want. My youngest sister married an American and they had twin sons. Now her husband has run off with another woman and left her stuck with the two boys. Naturally she wanted to get rid of them and I advised her to bring them over here and offer them to the trustees."

"She would have no problem in getting them accepted. Lovely little pets they are. Six coming on for seven years old, little blond angels. Perhaps a little plump and rather spoilt but that would be fun for someone to knock out of them."

"They arrived at Heathrow this evening and she brought them straight to the Duke. She telephoned me as they arrived. She said the two boys were exhausted poor little mites after their journey. I told her to put them to bed before they had any chance to see anything of the place so they didn't get alarmed and start playing up. Then when they were rested and looking their best she could present them before the trustees for acceptance. I am sure though that if you want them Sir she'd be very pleased to bring them up here now. Shall I telephone her and ask her to do so?"

"Please do so straight away Mrs Thomas."

A few minutes later Mrs Thomas returned to the room.

"I've spoken to my sister Sir. She's ordered a taxi to bring them up here and when it arrives at the hotel she'll get the two boys out of bed an bring them up here. I told her to bring them in their pyjamas just as they are. They should be here in about twenty minutes."

The serving boys had just brought the puddings to the table, strawberry shortcake and cream, when a crunch of wheels on gravel announced the arrival of the taxi. Soon afterwards Mrs Thomas appeared in the dining room with another lady very similar in appearance to her but looking about ten years younger. The younger woman was holding the hands of two small boys. They were pretty little creatures with hair the colour of ripe corn, their peaches and cream complexions still flushed from sleep. Thumbs stuck in their mouths, wrapped in pale blue dressing gowns with the lags of spider man pyjamas showing beneath their hems, they trotted unsteadily along behind their mother their small feet encased in slippers shaped like rabbit heads.

Mark saw the two boys hesitate when they entered the room and took in the crowd of adults all staring at them, Adam standing naked on his chair, the other children and the serving boys in their skimpy striped tunics. Their mother tightened her grip on their hands and jerked them forward. Angela, with what he was to come to regard as typical of her skill and tact in dealing with children, acted quickly to distract their attention.

"What pretty little cherubs," she cooed softly. "What are the little beauties names?"

"This little brute is called Ian," the woman replied savagely jerking forward the boy to her right, "the other is Duncan."

"Oh come here Ian, come here my pretty," Angela said leaning forward held out her arms to the boy.

Mary Roberts quickly issued a similar invitation to Duncan. The two children thankfully abandoned their hold on their suddenly hostile and unloving Mummy and eagerly went to their two new friends.

"Well I'm glad to be rid at last of those two little turds," their mother announced loudly. "Their bloody father spoilt them rotten and then when a new and younger bit of skirt came along he forgot all about them. Just buggered off and left the useless lumps of shit with me."

"Do you want to stay and watch?" Jack asked her.

"I would love to see the turds getting the cane across their bums but the taxi is outside waiting for me," the twins loving Mummy replied regretfully."

"Stay the night," Jack suggested.

"I'll make up a bed straight away and put a slut in to air it," Mrs Thomas said quickly. "Don't worry Megan I'll see it is spotlessly clean."

While the woman was talking Angela lifted Ian onto her lap and began to pet him.

"Do you like strawberries my sweet?" she asked.

The boy stared up into the face of his new friend and nodded his head vigorously. Angela took a strawberry from her plate and holding it between her finger and thumb popped it into the little fellow's mouth. Even as she did so her left hand was busy untying the cord of the child's dressing gown, fumbling with buttons and parting cloth. The child stirred uneasily but she quieted him whispering into his ear and feeding him further strawberries. Soon the dressing gown was undone and drawn from his shoulders, his pyjama jacket followed and then Angela tipped him for a moment from her lap to allow the Spiderman trousers to join the rest of his clothes on the floor. Meanwhile Mary Roberts had been working on Duncan and both boys were now undressed.

Before Angela drew the now naked Ian back onto her lap Mark caught a brief glimpse of the child's unclothed body. He was a nicely proportioned little thing with just a touch of puppy fat. His body was a light golden brown. Not the deep tan of a pauper boy which comes from constant exposure to the elements throughout the year but a lighter gentler colour that came from the occasional afternoon at the pool or on the beach. A band of pale flesh ran round his hips where his bathing trunks had shielded his body from the sun. His small round bottom on which the cane was soon to etch its cruel and bloody message was egg white.

"I tell you what," John Thompson remarked, "we ought to validate this experiment to have some sort of control. A boy whose bottom we do bloody but don't treat so that we can see if the ointment and powder do make any difference at all. Maybe the boys heal fast simply because they're young and healthy. We need to have some check to see if that is so."

"Well we won't be able to find another brat like these two. I can tell you that," Jack remarked.

"That's not necessary. With the control we will not be comparing the progress of healing as between two boys' rumps but that of one boy's bottom over a period of time, if you see what I mean. With the control we will want to establish if his untreated cuts and bruises have healed appreciably slower than those of the boys whose bottoms have been treated."

"Ideally though I admit we want a boy roughly about the same age as Ian and Duncan and with a reasonably unmarked bottom. You could use my Peter if you want. He's less than a year older than these two and what with packing the car and driving down here I haven't had the time or opportunity to use the strap much on him over the last couple of days. That's partly why I am going to take the cane to him tomorrow morning. If you don't give boys fairly frequent tastes of the rod they loose their fear of it."

All the adults so far as Mark could judge thought this was an excellent idea. Peter though appeared to be less than enthused by the prospect of being actively involved in the experiment in the manner proposed.

"Oh Dad," he protested and then brightening a little he added. "I spose if I catch it now I won't get it tomorrow as well."

"The two things are quite unrelated and you must not try to muddle them up," his father said firmly. "Your morning beating is a disciplinary one. This one is purely experimental and I would have thought, as a responsible intelligent boy, you would want to be involved in it. Anyway we have invited our new friends round to watch your morning thrashing. We can't disappoint them. For heaven's sake boy don't be so selfish. Think of other people for once. Now strip ready for the cane."

This adjuration drew a murmur of approval from the assembled adults. Brenda Thompson told her youngest son to "think of other people for a change." Mary Roberts looked up from her fondling of the naked little slut nestling in her lap to say that her son, Nicky, was also totally self centred.

Mark however noticed that Peter continued to look far from happy as he stood up and slipped his shorts down over his hips. His lips trembled and moisture glinted in his eyes. If he had been a charity brat he would already have been crying. A free boy's pride prevented him from doing so, so he bit his lower lip and blinked the tears away. He felt it was unfair but argument would only bring harsher punishment and he knew from experience pleas for mercy would be pointless. He folded his shorts neatly and stood naked waiting for his thrashing to begin. To Mark the boy looked wretchedly self conscious and acutely aware of the seven pairs of adult eyes observing his naked body

His father though was an experienced disciplinarian and knew that a beting was more effective if it was not hurried. The boy should be given time for reflection increasing his terror and the amusement of those observing him.

"Well don't just stand there Peter. Get over to the wall by the door and stand facing it. I want the tip of your nose pressed against the wall and your hands up on the top of your head. And stay there out of the way till I call you."

Obediently Peter took up station as instructed. The boy had to lean forward slightly so that the tip of his nose was touching the wall exaggerating the provocative jut of his bottom in the most delightful way. His tight little bum seemed almost to demand the biting kiss of the cane. Mark reflected that it would not be long before that request, if request it indeed was, was satisfied in full.

John Thompson had been right about the relatively unmarked condition of his youngest son's bottom. Apart from a single broad angry weal across the back of the child's thighs, such bruises as there were on his body were clearly several days old and amounted to no more than faint discolorations of his sun tanned skin. Mark lounged back in his chair and feasted his eyes on the Peter's taught young body. He always found the prospect of a boy being beaten a very stimulating one. He wondered how the boy had come by the fresh stripe that cut across the back of his firm young thighs just below his bottom. A word out of place, a failure to obey an order with sufficient speed, whatever the offence retribution had been swift, the boy's fault corrected and the adult's anger simultaneously assuaged. So much better, Mark thought, than the long drawn out admonitions with the consequent arguments and lingering resentments that result from the application of liberal theories and practices to the rearing of boys. No wonder the free boys of the Vale of Dingle were healthy young rascals with ready cheerful smiles in contrast to the sulky overweight yobs that were the norm in the rest of the United Kingdom.

"And there's another thing," John Thompson said bringing Mark's reflections to a sharp halt, "the two sluts are as like as two peas in a pod. Their Mummy may be able to tell them apart but I certainly can't. We could easily muddle them up and then our experiment would be ruined."

"Mrs Thomas?" Jack said.

"I'll tag the pair of them Sir if you'll give me a minute," that good lady said hurrying from the room.

While Mrs Thomas was away the serving boys under Jack Wardle's supervision set up the two flogging stools by the fire place where the brats suffering on them could easily be observed by the people sitting round the dining room table. These stools were low broad-based pieces of furniture with thickly padded leather tops. Flaps in the carpet were raised and the legs secured by bolts to brackets in the floorboards. Other flaps were raised and stout canvass bands with brass buckles were similarly secured. The brief tunics of the serving boys rode up their backs as they bent to bolt the stools and restraints in place affording the watching adults pleasing glimpses of the slut's juvenile charms.

It was not long before Mrs Thomas bustled back into the room carrying a large plastic box. Placing this on the table she extracted what looked like a spring loaded metal punch and a couple of brightly coloured diamond shaped plastic tags one yellow the other blue.

"They're the same sort of tags that are used to identify cattle," she explained. "Now which one shall I do first?" However this was clearly a rhetorical question for she immediately advanced on Ian who was sitting on Angela's lap.

Ian not knowing what was going to be done to him but sensing that it was something unpleasant and painful whimpered in fear and huddled closer to the woman. Angela slipped an arm round the child's waste and hugged him tight.

"There, there my sweetie," she soothed the child. "I won't let her hurt you my dear." Angela had no compunction about lying to the child. It was after all soon to be entered as a charity boy and being lied to would be the least of the abuses inflicted on it.

"How do you want the brat?" she asked Mrs Thomas.

"Just get a firm grip of his chin Miss and turn the slut's head so its left side is towards me."

Mrs Thomas, bending down over the boy, took the yellow diamond shaped plastic tag and bent it in half so that it sandwiched the top of his ear. Taking the spring loaded punch she bent the points of the diamond inwards and sunk them into either side of the child's ear. Mark saw a small bubble of blood well from where the outer point was anchored. Ian howled, thrashing his bare legs and throwing his naked body about in Angela's lap.

"You said it wouldn't hurt," he screamed moving his hand to tear at the tag fastened in the gristle of his ear.

Angela grabbed Ian's left wrist preventing him from getting at the tag. Laughing at the child's distress she held the desperately wriggling boy firm in her lap with an arm around his waste. Suddenly the boy ceased to struggle. He hunched forwards his small body racked with sobs. He had realised that he was alone unloved and helpless.

Megan leapt to her feet and snatching up a heavy silver ladle from the sideboard advanced on her sobbing son.

"For God's sake stop that stupid noise you ungrateful little brute," Ian's loving Mummy screamed at the hapless child as she brought the ladle cracking down hard on the crown of the boy's head. "I arrange for you to be indentured to one of the most respected and strict Masters in the whole of the Vale of Dingle and all you do dog shit is howl."

Megan raised the ladle to hit Ian for a second time. The boy cowered away from his mother raising his right arm to ward off the blow. Angela grabbed hold of his arm and pulled it down, pinioning both the child's thin wrists behind his back in her left hand. Her right arm she wrapped again around the brat's waste holding him steady so that his mother could hit him.

Meanwhile Mrs Thomas was performing the same task on Duncan. He, having seen his twin suffer, knew what was coming to him and put up a stronger resistance but a weak six year old had no chance against a couple of full grown adults and he was soon quelled and reduced to the same miserable condition as his brother. The only difference being that the tag in his ear was blue instead of yellow.

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