unostentatious house. But the secret was certain to leak out eventually.

Mrs. Nolan, the next-door neighbour, was first to learn it. She had called on Mrs. Danner to borrow a cup of sugar. The call, naturally, included a discussion of various domestic matters and a visit to the baby. She voiced a question that had occupied her mind for some time.

"Why do you keep the child in that iron thing? Aren't you afraid it will hurt itself?"

"Oh, no."

Mrs. Nolan viewed young Hugo. He was lying on a large pillow. Presently he rolled off its surface. "Active youngster, isn't he?"

"Very," Mrs. Danner said, nervously.

Hugo, as if he understood and desired to demonstrate, seized a corner of the pillow and flung it from him. It traversed a long arc and landed on the floor. Mrs. Nolan was startled. "Goodness! I never saw a child his age that could do that!"

"No. Let's go downstairs. I want to show you some tidies I'm making."

Mrs. Nolan paid no attention. She put the pillow back in the pen and watched while Hugo tossed it out. "There's something funny about that. It isn't normal. Have you seen a doctor?"

Mrs. Danner fidgeted. "Oh, yes. Little Hugo's healthy."

Little Hugo grasped the iron wall of his miniature prison. He pulled himself toward it. His skirt caught in the floor. He pulled harder. The pen moved toward him. A high soprano came from Mrs. Nolan. "He's moved it! I don't think I could move it myself! I tell you, I'm going to ask the doctor to examine him. You shouldn't let a child be like that."

Mrs. Danner, filled with consternation, sought refuge in prevarication. "Nonsense," she said as calmly as she could. "All we Douglases are like that. Strong children. I had a grandfather who could lift a cider keg when he was five—two hundred pounds and more. Hugo just takes after him, that's all."

Mrs. Nolan was annoyed. Partly because she was jealous of Hugo's prowess—her own children had been feeble and dull. Partly because she was frightened—no matter how strong a person became, a baby had no right to be so powerful. Partly because she sensed that Mrs. Danner was not telling the whole truth. She suspected that the Danners had found a new way to raise children. "Well," she said, "all I have to say is that it'll damage him. It'll strain his little heart. It'll do him a lot of harm. If I had a child like that, I'd tie it up most of the time for the first few years."

"Kate," Mrs. Danner said unpleasantly, "I believe you would."

Mrs. Nolan shrugged. "Well—I'm glad none of my children are freaks, anyhow."

"I'll get your sugar."

In the afternoon the minister called. He talked of the church and the town until he felt his preamble adequate. "I was wondering why you didn't bring your child to be baptized, Mrs. Danner. And why you couldn't come to church, now that it is old enough?"

"Well," she replied carefully, "the child is rather—irritable. And we thought we'd prefer to have it baptized at home."

"It's irregular."

"We'd prefer it."

"Very well. I'm afraid—" he smiled—"that you're a little—ah—unfamiliar with the upbringing of children. Natural—in the case of the first-born. Quite natural. But—ah—I met Mrs. Nolan to-day. Quite by accident. And she said that you kept the child—ah—in an iron pen. It seemed unnecessarily cruel to me—"

"Did it?" Mrs. Danner's jaw set squarely.

But the minister was not to be turned aside lightly. "I'm afraid, if it's true, that we—the church—will have to do something about it. You can't let the little fellow grow up surrounded by iron walls. It will surely point him toward the prison. Little minds are tender and—ah—impressionable."

"We've had a crib and two pens of wood," Mrs. Danner answered tartly. "He smashed them all."

"Ah? So?" Lifted eyebrows. "Temper, eh? He should be punished. Punishment is the only mould for unruly children."

"You'd punish a six-months-old baby?"

"Why—certainly. I've reared seven by the rod."

"Well—" a blazing maternal instinct made her feel vicious. "Well—you won't raise mine by a rod. Or touch it—by a mile. Here's your hat, parson." Mrs. Danner spent the next hour in prayer.

The village is known for the speed of its gossip and the sloth of its intelligence. Those two factors explain the conditions which preluded and surrounded the dawn of consciousness in young Hugo. Mrs. Danner's extemporaneous fabrication of a sturdy ancestral line kept the more supernatural elements of the baby's prowess from the public eye. It became rapidly and generally understood that the Danner infant was abnormal and that the treatment to which it was submitted was not usual. At the same time neither the gossips of Indian Creek nor the slightly more sage professors of the college exercised the wit necessary to realize that, however strong young Hugo might become, it was neither right nor just that his cradle days be augurs of that eventual estate. On the face of it the argument seemed logical. If Mrs. Danner's forbears had been men of peculiar might, her child might well be able to chin itself at three weeks and it might easily be necessary to confine it in a metal pen, however inhumane the process appeared.

Hugo was sheltered, and his early antics, peculiar and startling as they were to his parents, escaped public attention. The little current of talk about him was kept alive only because there was so small an array of topics for the local burghers. But it was not extraordinarily malicious. Months piled up. A year passed and then another.

Hugo was a good-natured, usually sober, and very sensitive child. Abednego Danner's fear that his process might have created muscular strength at the expense of reason diminished and vanished as Hugo learned to walk and to talk, and as he grasped the rudiments of human behaviour. His high little voice was heard in the house and about its lawns.

They began to condition him. Throughout his later life there lingered in his mind a memory of the barriers erected by his family. He was told not to throw his pillow, when words meant nothing to him. Soon after that, he was told not to throw anything. When he could walk, he was forbidden to jump. His jumps were shocking to see, even at the age of two and a half. He was carefully instructed on his behaviour out of doors. No move of his was to indicate his difference from the ordinary child.

He was taught kindness and respect for people and property. His every destructive impulse was carefully curbed. That training was possible only because he was sensitive and naturally susceptible to advice. Punishment had no physical terror for him, because he could not feel it. But disfavour, anger, vexation, or disappointment in another person reflected itself in him at once.

When he was four and a half, his mother sent him to Sunday school. He was enrolled in a class that sat near her own, so she was able to keep a careful eye on him. But Hugo did not misbehave. It was his first contact with a group of children, his first view of the larger cosmos. He sat quietly with his hands folded, as he had been told to sit. He listened to the teacher's stories of Jesus with excited interest.

On his third Sunday he heard one of the children whisper: "Here comes the strong boy."

He turned quickly, his cheeks red. "I'm not. I'm not."

"Yes, you are. Mother said so."

Hugo struggled with the two hymn books on the table. "I can't even lift these books," he lied.

The other child was impressed and tried to explain the situation later, taking the cause of Hugo's weakness against the charge of strength. But the accusation rankled in Hugo's young mind. He hated to be different—and he was beginning to realize that he was different.

From his earliest day that longing occupied him. He sought to hide his strength. He hated to think that other people were talking about him. The distinction he enjoyed was odious to him because it aroused unpleasant emotions in other people. He