"Well, that's just about it--that's just about as near as words could come to it," he managed to gasp, and the circle behind him rocked, too, and pounded its knee as one man.

The man on the desk went on working industriously with his pencil, even while he was speaking.

"And then I suppose he was pretty good with his hands, too, even when he was a little shaver?" he suggested tentatively. "But then I don't suppose that any one of you ever dreamed that you had a world's champion, right here at home, in the making, did you?"

The whole room leaned nearer. Even the late comer near the door forgot himself entirely and took one step forward, his narrowing gray eyes straining upon the Judge's face.

Judge Maynard again weighed his reply, word for word.

"We-e-ll, no," he admitted. "I don't believe I can say that I downright believed that he'd make a world's champion. Don't believe's I could truthfully state that I thought that. But I guess there isn't anybody in this town that would ever deny but what I did say more than once that he'd make the best of 'em hustle--ye-e-s, sir, the very best of 'em, some day!"

The speaker turned to face the hushed room behind him, as if to challenge contradiction, and Young Denny, waiting for some one to speak, touched his dry lips with the tip of his tongue. But no contradiction came. Instead Old Jerry, leaning across the Judge's broad back, quavered breathlessly.

"That's jest it--that's jest as it was--right to a hair. It was system done it--system right from the very beginning. And many's the time the Judge says to me--says he----"

Old Jerry never finished, for Judge Maynard lifted one hand majestically and the little white-haired old man's eager corroboration died on his lips. He shrank back into abashed silence, his lips working wordlessly.

"As I was saying," the Judge then proceeded ponderously, "I recognized he had what one could call--er----"

"Cla.s.s?" the man on the desk broke in again with his engaging smile.

"Well, yes," the other continued, "or, as I was about to call it, talent. From the very first that was very apparent, but then, of course, a man in my position in the community could scarcely have been the one to encourage him openly. But he was pretty good, even as a little shaver! Why, there was nothing among the boys that he wouldn't tackle--absolutely nothing! Size, sir, never made any difference to him--not a particle. Jeddy Conway fight----!"

Again he turned to the close-packed circle behind him as if mere words were too weak things to do the question justice. And this time as he turned his eyes met squarely those of the gray-shirted figure that was staring straight back at him in a kind of fascination. For one disconcerted instant Judge Maynard wavered; he caught his breath before that level scrutiny; then with a flourish of utter finality he threw up one pudgy hand.

"There's one of 'em right now," he cried. "There's Young Denny Bolton, who went to school with him, right here in this town. _Ask him_ if Jed Conway was pretty handy as a boy! Ask him," he leered around the room, an insinuating accent that was unmistakable underrunning the words.

Then a deep-throated chuckle shook him. "But maybe he won't tell--maybe he's still a little mite too sensitive to talk about it yet. Eh, Denny--just a little mite too sensitive?"

Denny Bolton failed to realize it at that moment, but there was a new quality in the Judge's chuckling statement--a certain hearty admission of equality which he had only a second before denied to Old Jerry's eager endeavor to help. The eyes of the fat man in brown lifted inquiringly from the notebook upon his knees and followed the direction of the Judge's outstretched finger. He was still grinning expansively--and then as he saw more clearly through the thick smoke the face which Judge Maynard was indicating, the grin disappeared.

Little by little Young Denny's body straightened until the slight shoulder stoop had entirely vanished, and all the while that his gaze never wavered from the Judge's face his eyes narrowed and his lips grew thinner and thinner. The confused lack of understanding was gone, too, at last, from his eyes. He even smiled once, a fleeting, mirthless smile that tugged at the corners of his wide mouth. For the moment he had forgotten the circle of peering faces. The room was very still.

It was the man on the desk who finally broke that quiet, but when he spoke his voice had lost its easily intimate good-fellowship. He spoke instead in a low-toned directness.

"So you went to school with Jed The Red, did you?" he asked gravely.

"Knew him when he was a kid?"

Slowly Denny Bolton's eyes traveled from the Judge's face. His lips opened with equal deliberation.

"I reckon I knew him--pretty well," he admitted.

The eyes of the man in brown were a little narrower, too, as he nodded thoughtfully.

"Er--had a few set-to's with him, yourself, now and then?"

He smiled, but even his smile was gravely direct. Again there was a heavy silence before Young Denny replied.

Then, "Maybe," he said, noncommittally. "Maybe I did."

The throbbing silence in that room went all to bits. Judge Maynard wheeled in his chair toward the man on the desk and fell to pounding his knee again in the excess of his appreciation.

"Maybe," he chortled, "maybe he did! Well--I--reckon!"

And, following his lead, the whole room rocked with laughter in which all but the man in brown joined. He alone, from his place on the desk, saw that there was a white circle about the boy's tight mouth as Young Denny turned and fumbled with the latch before he opened the door and pa.s.sed quietly out into the night. He alone noticed, but there was the faintest shadow of a queer smile upon his own lips as he turned back to the big notebook open on his knees--a vaguely unpleasant smile that was not in keeping with the rotund jollity of his face.

For a moment Denny Bolton stood with his strained white face turned upward, the roar in the room behind him beating in his ears; then he turned and went blindly up the road that wound toward the bleak house on the hill--he went slowly and unsteadily, stumbling now and again in the deep ruts which it was too dark for him to see.

It was only when he reached the crest of the hill, where Old Jerry had failed to remember to leave him his mail that afternoon, that he recalled his own failure to feed the team with which he had been ploughing all day back in the fields. And in the same blind, automatic fashion he crossed and threw open the door of the barn.

The interior was dark, blacker even than the thick darkness of the night outside. Young Denny, muttering to himself, forgot to strike a light--he even forgot to speak aloud to the nervous animals in the stalls until his fingers, groping ahead of him, touched something sleek and warm and brought him back to himself. Then, instinctively, although it was too late, he threw up one big shoulder to protect his face before he was lifted and hurled crashing back against the wall by the impact of the heavy hoofs that catapulted out of the blackness. A moment the boy stood, swayed sickeningly, and sank to his knees. Then he began to think clearly again, and with one hand clasped over the great, jagged gash which the glancing iron shoe had laid open across his chin, he reached up and found a cross beam and dragged himself erect.

"Whoa, Tommy, whoa boy!" he soothed the dancing horse. "Steady, it's only me, boy!" he stammered, and supporting himself against the wall he groped again until he found the feedbin and finished his day's work.

It was even darker in the bare kitchen when he lurched dizzily through the door. Once as he was feeling his way along the wall, searching for a light, his feet stumbled on a hard rounded object against the wainscoting, and as it toppled over its contents ran with a slopping gurgle over the floor.

Then his fingers found the light. Holding himself with one hand, he lifted the little lamp with its blackened chimney from its bracket and raised it until it illuminated his features reflected in the small square mirror that hung against the wall. For a long time he stood and looked. The blood that oozed from the ugly bruise upon his chin was splashing in warm drops to the floor; his face was paper white, and strangely taut and twisted with pain, but the boy noticed neither the one nor the other. Straight back into his own eyes he stared--stared steadily for all that his big shoulders were swaying drunkenly. And for the first time that he could ever recollect Young Denny Bolton laughed--laughed with real mirth.

He placed the smoking lamp upon the bare board table and turned. As if they could still hear him--the circle about the Tavern stove in the valley below--he lifted both hard fists and tightened them until the heavy muscles beneath his shirt bunched and quivered like live things.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "DRYAD, IT'S ALL RIGHT--IT'S ALWAYS BEEN ALL RIGHT--WITH US! THEY LIED--THEY LIED AND THEY KNEW THEY WERE LYING!"]

"Size never made any difference to him?" he repeated the Judge's word aloud, with a drawling interrogation. "Size never made any difference to him?"

He laughed again, softly, as if there were a newly discovered humor about it all which must be jealously guarded.

"It never had to make any difference," the drawling voice went on, "it didn't have to--because Jed Conway was always the biggest boy in the school!"

His nostrils were dilating, twitching with the thin, sharp odor of the overturned demijohn which was rising and thickening in the room. His eyes fell and for the first time became conscious of it lying there at his feet. And he stooped and picked it up, lifting it between both hands until it was level with his face--until it was held at arm's length high above his head. Then his whole body snapped forward and the gla.s.s from the broken window pane jingled musically on the floor as the jug crashed out into the night.

Young Denny stood and smiled, one side of his chin a gash of crimson against the dead white of his face. Again he lifted his fists.

"He never whipped me," he challenged the lights in the hollow, "he never whipped me--and he never tried but once! I--I--ain't never been--whipped--yet!"

There had been no sound to herald her coming as she darted up to the door. Reeling giddily there in the middle of the room, he had not even heard the one low cry that she choked back as she stopped at the threshold, but he half turned that moment and met the benumbed horror of Dryad Anderson's eyes. Minute after minute he merely stood and stared back at her stupidly, while bit by bit every detail of her transformation began to penetrate his brain, still foggy with the force of the blow that had laid his chin wide open. Her tumbled hair was piled high upon her head; she was almost tall with the added height of the high-heeled satin slippers; more slender than ever in the bespangled clinging black skirt and sleeveless scarlet waist which the old cloak, slipping unheeded from her shoulders, had disclosed.

As his brain began to clear Young Denny forgot the dripping blood that made his white face ghastly, he forgot the stinging odor of the broken demijohn, thick in the room--forgot everything but Judge Maynard's face when the latter had looked up and found him standing at the Tavern door. He knew now what the light was that had lurked in their shifty depths; it was fear--fear that he--Young Denny--might speak up in that moment and disclose all the hypocrisy of his suave lies. He even failed to see the horror in the eyes of the girl before him.

Sudden, reckless laughter rang from his lips.

"Dryad," he cried out. "Dryad, it's all right--it's always been all right--with us! They lied--they lied and they knew they were lying!"

She shrank back, as if all the strength had been drained from her knees, as he lurched unsteadily across toward her and reached out his arms. But at the touch of his hands upon her shoulders the power of action came rushing back into her limbs. She shuddered and whirled--and shook off his groping fingers. Her own hands flashed out and held his face away from her.

"Don't you touch me!" she panted huskily. "Oh, you--you--don't you even dare to come near me!"

He tried to explain--tried to follow her swift flight as she leaped back, but his feet became entangled in the cloak on the floor and brought him heavily to his knees. He even tried to follow her after she had been swallowed up in the shadows outside, until he realized dully that his shuffling feet would not go where his whirling head directed them. Once he called out to her, before he staggered back to the kitchen door, and received no answer.

With his hands gripping the door frame he eased himself down to the top step and sat rocking gently to and fro.

"S'all right," he muttered once, his tongue thick with pain. "S'always been all right!"