whipped grown boys in the high school for their misdeeds. To send a six-year-old child was crushing. But Hugo had risen above the standards set by his society. He had been superior to it for a moment, and society hated him for it. His teacher hated him because she feared him. Mothers of children, learning about the episode, collected to discuss it in high-pitched, hateful voices. Hugo was enveloped in hate. And, as the lash of the smith fell on his small frame, he felt the depths of misery. He was a strong man. There was damnation in his veins.

The minister came and prayed over him. The doctor was sent for and examined him. Frantic busybodies suggested that things be done to weaken him—what things, they did not say. And Hugo, suffering bitterly, saw that if he had beaten the farmer's boy in fair combat, he would have been a hero. It was the scale of his triumph that made it dreadful. He did not realize then that if he had been so minded, he could have turned on the blacksmith and whipped him, he could have broken the neck of the doctor, he could have run raging through the town and escaped unscathed. His might was a secret from himself. He knew it only as a curse, like a disease or a blemish.

During the ensuing four or five years Hugo's peculiar trait asserted itself but once. It was a year after his fight with the bully. He had been isolated socially. Even Anna Blake did not dare to tease him any longer. Shunned and wretched, he built a world of young dreams and confections and lived in it with whatever comfort it afforded.

One warm afternoon in a smoky Indian summer he walked home from school, spinning a top as he walked, stopping every few yards to pick it up and to let its eccentric momentum die on the palm of his hand. His pace thereby was made very slow and he calculated it to bring him to his home in time for supper and no sooner, because, despite his vigour, chores were as odious to him as to any other boy. A wagon drawn by two horses rolled toward him. It was a heavy wagon, piled high with grain-sacks, and a man sat on its rear end, his legs dangling.

As the wagon reached Hugo, it jolted over a rut. There was a grinding rip and a crash. Hugo pocketed his top and looked. The man sitting on the back had been pinned beneath the rear axle, and the load held him there. As Hugo saw his predicament, the man screamed in agony. Hugo's blood chilled. He stood transfixed. A man jumped out of a buggy. A Negro ran from a yard. Two women hurried from the spot. In an instant there were six or seven men around the broken wagon. A sound of pain issued from the mouth of the impaled man. The knot of figures bent at the sides of the cart and tried to lift. "Have to get a jack," Hugo heard them say.

Hugo wound up his string and put it beside his top. He walked mechanically into the road. He looked at the legs of the man on the ground. They were oozing blood where the backboard rested on them. The men gathered there were lifting again, without result. Hugo caught the side and bent his small shoulders. With all his might he pulled up. The wagon was jerked into the air. They pulled out the injured man. Hugo lowered the wagon slowly.

For a moment no attention was paid to him. He waited pridefully for the recognition he had earned. He dug in the dirt with the side of his shoe. A man with a mole on his nose observed him. "Funny how that kid's strength was just enough to turn the balance."

Hugo smiled. "I'm pretty strong," he admitted.

Another man saw him. "Get out of here," he said sharply. "This is no place for a kid."

"But I was the one—"

"I said beat it. And I meant beat it. Go home to your ma."

Slowly the light went from Hugo's eyes. They did not know—they could not know. He had lifted more than two tons. And the men stood now, waiting for the doctor, telling each other how strong they were when the instant of need came.

"Go on, kid. Run along. I'll smack you."

Hugo went. He forgot to spin his top. He stumbled a little as he walked.

IV

Days, months, years. They had forgotten that Hugo was different. Almost, for a while, he had forgotten it himself. He was popular in school. He fostered the unexpressed theory that his strength had been a phenomenon of his childhood—one that diminished as he grew older. Then, at ten, it called to him for exercise.

Each day he rose with a feeling of insufficiency. Each night he retired unrequited. He read. Poe, the Bible, Scott, Thackeray, Swift, Defoe—all the books he could find. He thrilled with every syllable of adventure. His imagination swelled. But that was not sufficient. He yearned as a New England boy yearns before he runs away to sea.

At ten he was a stalwart and handsome lad. His brow was high and surmounted by his peculiarly black hair. His eyes were wide apart, inky, unfathomable. He carried himself with the grace of an athlete. He studied hard and he worked hard for his parents, taking care of a cow and chickens, of a stable and a large lawn, of flowers and a vegetable garden.

Then one day he went by himself to walk in the mountains. He had not been allowed to go into the mountains alone. A Wanderlust that came half from himself and half from his books led his feet along a narrow, leafy trail into the forest depths. Hugo lay down and listened to the birds in the bushes, to the music of a brook, and to the sound of the wind. He wanted to be free and brave and great. By and by he stood up and walked again.

An easy exhilaration filled his veins. His pace increased. "I wonder," he thought, "how fast I can run, how far I can jump." He quickened his stride. In a moment he found that the turns in the trail were too frequent for him to see his course. He ran ahead, realizing that he was moving at an abnormal pace. Then he turned, gathered himself, and jumped carefully. He was astonished when he vaulted above the green covering of the trail. He came down heavily. He stood in his tracks, tingling.

"Nobody can do that, not even an acrobat," he whispered. Again he tried, jumping straight up. He rose fully forty feet in the air.

"Good Jesus!" he exulted. In those lonely, incredible moments Hugo found himself. There in the forest, beyond the eye of man, he learned that he was superhuman. It was a rapturous discovery. He knew at that hour that his strength was not a curse. He had inklings of his invulnerability.

He ran. He shot up the steep trail like an express train, at a rate that would have been measured in miles to the hour rather than yards to the minute. Tireless blood poured through his veins. Green streaked at his sides. In a short time he came to the end of the trail. He plunged on, careless of obstacles that would have stopped an ordinary mortal. From trunk to trunk he leaped a burned stretch. He flung himself from a high rock. He sped like a shadow across a pine-carpeted knoll. He gained the bare rocks of the first mountain, and in the open, where the horror of no eye would tether his strength, he moved in flying bounds to its summit.

Hugo stood there, panting. Below him was the world. A little world. He laughed. His dreams had been broken open. His depression was relieved. But he would never let them know—he, Hugo, the giant. Except, perhaps, his father. He lifted his arms—to thank God, to jeer at the world. Hugo was happy.

He went home wondering. He was very hungry—hungrier than he had ever been—and his parents watched him eat with hidden glances. Samson had eaten thus, as if his stomach were bottomless and his food digested instantly to make room for more. And, as he ate, Hugo tried to open a conversation that would lead to a confession to his father. But it seemed impossible.

Hugo liked his father. He saw how his mother dominated the little professor, how she seemed to have crushed and bewildered him until his mind was unfocused from its present. He could not love his mother because of that. He did not reason that her religion had made her blind and selfish, but he felt