Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

                             GLADIATOR

                            Philip Wylie

    [Transcriber's Note: Extensive research did not uncover any evidence
    that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Once upon a time in Colorado lived a man named Abednego Danner and his
wife, Matilda. Abednego Danner was a professor of biology in a small
college in the town of Indian Creek. He was a spindling wisp of a man,
with a nature drawn well into itself by the assaults of the world and
particularly of the grim Mrs. Danner, who understood nothing and
undertook all. Nevertheless these two lived modestly in a frame house on
the hem of Indian Creek and they appeared to be a settled and peaceful
couple.

The chief obstacle to Mrs. Danner's placid dominion of her hearth was
Professor Danner's laboratory, which occupied a room on the first floor
of the house. It was the one impregnable redoubt in her domestic
stronghold. Neither threat nor entreaty would drive him and what she
termed his "stinking, unchristian, unhealthy dinguses" from that room.
After he had lectured vaguely to his classes on the structure of the
_Paramecium caudatum_ and the law discovered by Mendel, he would shut
the door behind himself, and all the fury of the stalwart, black-haired
woman could not drive him out until his own obscure ends were served.

It never occurred to Professor Danner that he was a great man or a
genius. His alarm at such a notion would have been pathetic. He was so
fascinated by the trend of his thoughts and experiments, in fact, that
he scarcely realized by what degrees he had outstripped a world that
wore picture hats, hobble skirts, and straps beneath its trouser legs.
However, as the century turned and the fashions changed, he was carried
further from them, which was just as well.

On a certain Sunday he sat beside his wife in church, singing snatches
of the hymns in a doleful and untrue voice and meditating, during the
long sermon, on the structure of chromosomes. She, bolt upright and
overshadowing him, like a coffin in the pew, rigid lest her black silk
rustle, thrilled in some corner of her mind at the picture of hell and
salvation.

Mr. Danner's thoughts turned to Professor Mudge, whose barren pate
showed above the congregation a few rows ahead of him. There, he said to
himself, sat a stubborn and unenlightened man. And so, when the weekly
tyranny of church was ended, he asked Mudge to dinner. That he
accomplished by an argument with his wife, audible the length of the
aisle.

They walked to the Danner residence. Mrs. Danner changed her clothes
hurriedly, basted the roast, made milk sauce for the string beans, and
set three places. They went into the dining-room. Danner carved, the
home-made mint jelly was passed, the bread, the butter, the gravy; and
Mrs. Danner dropped out of the conversation, after guying her husband on
his lack of skill at his task of carving.

Mudge opened with the usual comment. "Well, Abednego, how are the
blood-stream radicals progressing?"

His host chuckled. "Excellently, thanks. Some day I'll be ready to jolt
you hidebound biologists into your senses."

Mudge's left eyebrow lifted. "So? Still the same thing, I take it? Still
believe that chemistry controls human destiny?"

"Almost ready to demonstrate it," Danner replied.

"Along what lines?"

"Muscular strength and the nervous discharge of energy."

Mudge slapped his thigh. "Ho ho! Nervous discharge of energy. You assume
the human body to be a voltaic pile, eh? That's good. I'll have to tell
Gropper. He'll enjoy it."

Danner, in some embarrassment, gulped a huge mouthful of meat. "Why
not?" he said. "Look at the insects--the ants. Strength a hundred times
our own. An ant can carry a large spider--yet an ant is tissue and
fiber, like a man. If a man could be given the same sinews--he could
walk off with his own house."

"Ha ha! There's a good one. Maybe you'll do it, Abednego."

"Possibly, possibly."

"And you would make a splendid piano-mover."

"Pianos! Pooh! Consider the grasshoppers. Make a man as strong as a
grasshopper--and he'll be able to leap over a church. I tell you, there
is something that determines the quality of every muscle and nerve. Find
it--transplant it--and you have the solution."

Mirth overtook Professor Mudge in a series of paroxysms from which he
emerged rubicund and witty. "Probably your grasshopper man will look
like a grasshopper--more insect than man. At least, Danner, you have
imagination."

"Few people have," Danner said, and considered that he had acquitted
himself.

His wife interrupted at that point. "I think this nonsense has gone far
enough. It is wicked to tamper with God's creatures. It is wicked to
discuss such matters--especially on the Sabbath. Abednego, I wish you
would give up your work in the laboratory."

Danner's cranium was overlarge and his neck small; but he stiffened it
to hold himself in a posture of dignity. "Never."

His wife gazed from the defiant pose to the locked door visible through
the parlour. She stirred angrily in her clothes and speared a morsel of
food. "You'll be punished for it."

Later in the day Mudge and Gropper laughed heartily at the expense of
the former's erstwhile host. Danner read restively. He was forbidden to
work on the Sabbath. It was his only compromise. Matilda Danner turned
the leaves of the Bible and meditated in a partial vacuum of day-dreams.

On Monday Danner hastened home from his classes. During the night he had
had a new idea. And a new idea was a rare thing after fourteen years of
groping investigation. "Alkaline radicals," he murmured as he crossed
his lawn. He considered a group of ultra-microscopic bodies. He had no
name for them. They were the "determinants" of which he had talked. He
locked the laboratory door behind himself and bent over the microscope
he had designed. "Huh!" he said. An hour later, while he stirred a
solution in a beaker, he said: "Huh!" again. He repeated it when his
wife called him to dinner. The room was a maze of test tubes, bottles,
burners, retorts, instruments. During the meal he did not speak.
Afterwards he resumed work. At twelve he prepared six tadpole eggs and
put them to hatch. It would be his three hundred and sixty-first
separate tadpole hatching.

Then, one day in June, Danner crossed the campus with unusual haste.
Birds were singing, a gentle wind eddied over the town from the slopes
of the Rocky Mountains, flowers bloomed. The professor did not heed the
reburgeoning of nature. A strange thing had happened to him that
morning. He had peeped into his workroom before leaving for the college
and had come suddenly upon a phenomenon.

One of the tadpoles had hatched in its aquarium. He observed it eagerly,
first because it embodied his new idea, and second because it swam with
a rare activity. As he looked, the tadpole rushed at the side of its
domicile. There was a tinkle and a splash. It had swum through the plate
glass! For an instant it lay on the floor. Then, with a flick of its
tail, it flew into the air and hit the ceiling of the room.

"Good Lord!" Danner said. Old years of work were at an end. New years of
excitement lay ahead. He snatched the creature and it wriggled from his
grasp. He caught it again. His fist was not sufficiently strong to hold
it. He left it, flopping in eight-foot leaps, and went to class with
considerable suppressed agitation and some reluctance. The determinant
was known. He had made a living creature abnormally strong.

When he reached his house and unlocked the door of the laboratory, he
found that four tadpoles, in all, had hatched. Before they expired in
the unfamiliar element of air, they had demolished a quantity of
apparatus.

Mrs. Danner knocked on the door. "What's been going on in there?"

"Nothing," her husband answered.

"Nothing! It sounded like nothing! What have you got there? A cat?"

"No--yes."

"Well--I won't have such goings on, and that's all there is to it."

Danner collected the débris. He buried the tadpoles. One was dissected
first. Then he wrote for a long time in his notebook. After that he went
out and, with some difficulty, secured a pregnant cat. A week later he
chloroformed the tabby and inoculated her. Then he waited. He had been
patient for a long time. It was difficult to be patient now.

When the kittens were born into this dark and dreary world, Mr. Danner
assisted as sole obstetrician. In their first hours nothing marked them
as unique. The professor selected one and drowned the remainder. He
remembered the tadpoles and made a simple calculation.

When the kitten was two weeks old and its eyes opened, it was dieting on
all its mother's milk and more besides. The professor considered that
fact significant. Then one day it committed matricide.

Probably the playful blow of its front paw was intended in the best
spirit. Certainly the old tabby, receiving it, was not prepared for such
violence from its offspring. Danner gasped. The kitten had unseamed its
mother in a swift and horrid manner. He put the cat out of its misery
and tended the kitten with trepidation. It grew. It ate--beefsteaks and
chops, bone and all.

When it reached three weeks, it began to jump alarmingly. The laboratory
was not large enough. The professor brought it its food with the
expression of a man offering a wax sausage to a hungry panther.

On a peaceful Friday evening Danner built a fire to stave off the
rigours of a cold snap. He and Mrs. Danner sat beside the friendly
blaze. Her sewing was in her lap, and in his was a book to which he paid
scant attention. The kitten, behind its locked door, thumped and mewed.

"It's hungry," Mrs. Danner said. "If you must keep a cat, why don't you
feed it?"

"I do," he answered. He refrained, for politic reasons, from mentioning
what and how much he fed it. The kitten mewed again.

"Well," she repeated, "it sounds hungry."

Danner fidgeted. The laboratory was unheated and consequently chilly.
From its gloomy interior the kitten peered beneath the door and saw the
fire. It sensed warmth. The feline affinity for hearths drew it. One paw
scratched tentatively on the door.

"It's cold," Mrs. Danner said. "Why don't you bring it here? No, I don't
want it here. Take it a cover."

"It--it has a cover." Danner did not wish to go into that dark room.

The kitten scratched again and then it became earnest. There was a
splitting, rending sound. The bottom panel of the door was torn away and
it emerged nonchalantly, crossing the room and curling up by the fire.

For five minutes Mrs. Danner sat motionless. Her eyes at length moved
from the kitten to her husband's quivering face and then to the broken
door. On his part, he made no move. The kitten was a scant six inches
from his foot. Mrs. Danner rose. She went to the door and studied the
orifice, prying at it with her fingers as if to measure the kitten's
strength by her own. Then she turned the key and peered into the gloom.
That required either consummate nerve or great curiosity. After her
inspection she sat down again.

Ten minutes passed. Danner cleared his throat. Then she spoke. "So.
You've done it?"

"Done what?" he asked innocently.

"You've made all this rubbish you've been talking about strength--happen
to that kitten."

"It wasn't rubbish."

"Evidently."

At that crisis Mr. Danner's toe trembled and the kitten, believing it a
new toy, curled its paws over the shoe. There was a sound of tearing
leather, and the shoe came apart. Fortunately the foot inside it was not
hurt severely. Danner did not dare to budge. He heard his wife's
startled inhalation.

Mrs. Danner did not resume her sewing. She breathed heavily and slow
fire crept into her cheeks. The enormity of the crime overcame her. And
she perceived that the hateful laboratory had invaded her portion of
the house. Moreover, her sturdy religion had been desecrated. Danner
read her thoughts.

"Don't be angry," he said. Beads of perspiration gathered on his brow.

"Angry!" The kitten stirred at the sound of her voice. "Angry! And why
not? Here you defied God and man--and made that creature of the devil.
You've overrun my house. You're a wicked, wicked man. And as for that
cat, I won't have it. I won't stand for it."

"What are you going to do?"

Her voice rose to a scream. "Do! Do! Plenty--and right here and now."
She ran to the kitchen and came back with a broom. She flung the front
door wide. Her blazing eyes rested for a moment on the kitten. To her it
had become merely an obnoxious little animal. "Scat! You little demon!"
The broom came down on the cat's back with a jarring thud.

After that, chaos. A ball of fur lashed through the air. What-not, bird
cage, bookcase, morris chair flew asunder. Then the light went out. In
the darkness a comet, a hurricane, ricochetted through the room. Then
there was a crash mightier than the others, followed by silence.

When Danner was able, he picked himself up and lighted the lamp. His
wife lay on the floor in a dead faint. He revived her. She sat up and
wept silently over the wreck of her parlour. Danner paled. A round
hole--a hole that could have been made by nothing but a solid cannon
shot--showed where the kitten had left the room through the wall.

Mrs. Danner's eyes were red-rimmed. Her breath came jerkily. With
incredulous little gestures she picked herself up and gazed at the hole.
A draught blew through it. Mr. Danner stuffed it with a rug.

"What are we going to do?" she said.

"If it comes back--we'll call it Samson."

And--as soon as Samson felt the gnawing of appetite, he returned to his
rightful premises. Mrs. Danner fed him. Her face was pale and her hands
trembled. Horror and fascination fought with each other in her soul as
she offered the food. Her husband was in his classroom, nervously trying
to fix his wits on the subject of the day.

"Kitty, kitty, poor little kitty," she said.

Samson purred and drank a quart of milk. She concealed her astonishment
from herself. Mrs. Danner's universe was undergoing a transformation.

At three in the afternoon the kitten scratched away the screen door on
the back porch and entered the house. Mrs. Danner fed it the supper
meat.

Danner saw it when he returned. It was chasing flies in the yard. He
stood in awe. The cat could spring twenty or thirty feet with ease. Then
the sharp spur of dread entered him. Suppose someone saw and asked
questions. He might be arrested, taken to prison. Something would
happen. He tried to analyze and solve the problem. Night came. The cat
was allowed to go out unmolested. In the morning the town of Indian
Creek rose to find that six large dogs had been slain during the dark
hours. A panther had come down from the mountains, they said. And Danner
lectured with a dry tongue and errant mind.

It was Will Hoag, farmer of the fifth generation, resident of the
environs of Indian Creek, church-goer, and hard-cider addict, who bent
himself most mercilessly on the capture of the alleged panther. His
chicken-house suffered thrice and then his sheep-fold. After four such
depredations he cleaned his rifle and undertook a vigil from a spot
behind the barn. An old moon rose late and illuminated his pastures with
a blue glow. He drank occasionally from a jug to ward off the evil
effects of the night air.

Some time after twelve his attention was distracted from the jug by
stealthy sounds. He moved toward them. A hundred yards away his cows
were huddled together--a heap of dun shadows. He saw a form which he
mistook for a weasel creeping toward the cows. As he watched, he
perceived that the small animal behaved singularly unlike a weasel. It
slid across the earth on taut limbs, as if it was going to attack the
cows. Will Hoag repressed a guffaw.

Then the farmer's short hair bristled. The cat sprang and landed on the
neck of the nearest cow and clung there. Its paw descended. There was a
horrid sound of ripping flesh, a moan, the thrashing of hoofs, a blot
of dribbling blood, and the cat began to gorge on its prey.

Hoag believed that he was intoxicated, that delirium tremens had
overtaken him. He stood rooted to the spot. The marauder ignored him.
Slowly, unbelievingly, he raised his rifle and fired. The bullet knocked
the cat from its perch. Mr. Hoag went forward and picked it up.

"God Almighty," he whispered. The bullet had not penetrated the cat's
skin. And, suddenly, it wriggled in his hand. He dropped it. A flash of
fur in the moonlight, and he was alone with the corpse of his Holstein.

He contemplated profanity, he considered kneeling in prayer. His joints
turned to water. He called faintly for his family. He fell unconscious.

When Danner heard of that exploit--it was relayed by jeering tongues who
said the farmer was drunk and a panther had killed the cow--his lips set
in a line of resolve. Samson was taking too great liberties. It might
attack a person, in which case he, Danner, would be guilty of murder.
That day he did not attend his classes. Instead, he prepared a
relentless poison in his laboratory and fed it to the kitten in a brace
of meaty chops. The dying agonies of Samson, aged seven weeks, were
Homeric.

After that, Danner did nothing for some days. He wondered if his formulæ
and processes should be given to the world. But, being primarily a man
of vast imagination, he foresaw hundreds of rash experiments. Suppose,
he thought, that his discovery was tried on a lion, or an elephant! Such
a creature would be invincible. The tadpoles were dead. The kitten had
been buried. He sighed wearily and turned his life into its usual
courses.

II

Before the summer was ended, however, a new twist of his life and
affairs started the mechanism of the professor's imagination again. It
was announced to him when he returned from summer school on a hot
afternoon. He dropped his portfolio on the parlour desk, one corner of
which still showed the claw-marks of the miscreant Samson, and sat down
with a comfortable sigh.

"Abednego." His wife seldom addressed him by his first name.

"Yes?"

"I--I--I want to tell you something."

"Yes?"

"Haven't you noticed any difference in me lately?"

He had never noticed a difference in his wife. When they reached old
age, he would still be unable to discern it. He shook his head and
looked at her with some apprehension. She was troubled. "What's the
matter?"

"I suppose you wouldn't--yet," she said. "But--well--I'm with child."

The professor folded his upper lip between his thumb and forefinger.
"With child? Pregnant? You mean--"

"I'm going to have a baby."

Soon after their marriage the timid notion of parenthood had escaped
them. They had, in fact, avoided its mechanics except on those rare
evenings when tranquillity and the reproductive urge conspired to imbue
him with courage and her with sinfulness. Nothing came of that
infrequent union. They never expected anything.

And now they were faced with it. He murmured: "A baby."

Faint annoyance moved her. "Yes. That's what one has. What are we going
to do?"

"I don't know, Matilda. But I'm glad."

She softened. "So am I, Abednego."

Then a hissing, spattering sound issued from the kitchen. "The beans!"
Mrs. Danner said. The second idyl of their lives was finished.

Alone in his bed, tossing on the humid muslin sheets, Danner struggled
within himself. The hour that was at hand would be short. The logical
step after the tadpoles and the kitten was to vaccinate the human mammal
with his serum. To produce a super-child, an invulnerable man. As a
scientist he was passionately intrigued by the idea. As a husband he
was dubious. As a member of society he was terrified.

That his wife would submit to the plan or to the step it necessitated
was beyond belief. She would never allow a sticky tube of foreign animal
matter to be poured into her veins. She would not permit the will of God
to be altered or her offspring to be the subject of experiment. Another
man would have laughed at the notion of persuading her. Mr. Danner never
laughed at matters that involved his wife.

There was another danger. If the child was female and became a woman
like his wife, then the effect of such strength would be awful indeed.
He envisioned a militant reformer, an iron-bound Calvinist, remodelling
the world single-handed. A Scotch Lilith, a matronly Gabriel, a
she-Hercules. He shuddered.

A hundred times he denied his science. A hundred and one times it begged
him to be served. Each decision to drop the idea was followed by an
effort to discover means to inoculate her without her knowledge. To his
wakeful ears came the reverberation of her snores. He rose and paced the
floor. A scheme came to him. After that he was lost.

Mrs. Danner was surprised when her husband brought a bottle of
blackberry cordial to her. It was his first gift to her in more than a
year. She was fond of cordial. He was not. She took a glass after supper
and then a second, which she drank "for him." He smiled nervously and
urged her to drink it. His hands clenched and unclenched. When she
finished the second glass, he watched her constantly.

"I feel sleepy," she said.

"You're tired." He tried to dissemble the eagerness in his voice. "Why
don't you lie down?"

"Strange," she said a moment later. "I'm not usually so--so--misty."

He nodded. The opiate in the cordial was working. She lay on the couch.
She slept. The professor hastened to his laboratory. An hour later he
emerged with a hypodermic syringe in his hand. His wife lay limply, one
hand touching the floor. Her stern, dark face was relaxed. He sat beside
her. His conscience raged. He hated the duplicity his task required. His
eyes lingered on the swollen abdomen. It was cryptic, enigmatic, filled
with portent. He jabbed the needle. She did not stir. After that he
substituted a partly empty bottle of cordial for the drugged liquor. It
was, perhaps, the most practical thing he had ever done in his life.

Mrs. Danner could not explain herself on the following morning. She
belaboured him. "Why didn't you wake me and make me go to bed? Sleeping
in my clothes! I never did such a thing in my life."

"I couldn't wake you. I tried."

"Rubbish."

"You were sleeping so hard--you refused to move."

"Sometimes, old as you are, I'd like to thrash you."

Danner went to the college. There was nothing more to do, nothing more
to require his concentration. He could wait--as he had waited before. He
trembled occasionally with the hope that his child would be a boy--a
sane, healthy boy. Then, in the end, his work might bear fruit. "The
_Euglena viridis_," he said in flat tones, "will be the subject of
to-morrow's study. I want you gentlemen to diagram the structure of the
_Euglena viridis_ and write five hundred words on its vital principles
and processes. It is particularly interesting because it shares
properties that are animal with properties that are vegetable."

September, October, November. Chilly winds from the high mountains. The
day-by-day freezing over of ponds and brooks. Smoke at the tops of
chimneys. Snow. Thanksgiving. And always Mrs. Danner growing with the
burden of her offspring. Mr. Danner sitting silent, watching, wondering,
waiting. It would soon be time.

On Christmas morning there entered into Mrs. Danner's vitals a pain that
was indefinable and at the same time certain. It thrust all thought from
her mind. Then it diminished and she summoned her husband. "Get the
doctor. It's coming."

Danner tottered into the street and executed his errand. The doctor
smiled cheerfully. "Just beginning? I'll be over this afternoon."

"But--good Lord--you can't leave her like--"

"Nonsense."

He came home and found his wife dusting. He shook his head. "Get Mrs.
Nolan," she said. Then she threw herself on the bed again.

Mrs. Nolan, the nearest neighbour, wife of Professor Nolan and mother of
four children, was delighted. This particular Christmas was going to be
a day of some excitement. She prepared hot water and bustled with
unessential occupation. Danner sat prostrate in the parlour. He had done
it. He had done more--and that would be known later. Perhaps it would
fail. He hoped it would fail. He wrung his hands. The concept of another
person in his house had not yet occurred to him. Birth was his wife's
sickness--until it was over.

The doctor arrived after Danner had made his third trip. Mrs. Nolan
prepared lunch. "I love to cook in other people's kitchens," she said.
He wanted to strike her. Curious, he thought. At three-thirty the
industry of the doctor and Mrs. Nolan increased and the silence of the
two, paradoxically, increased with it.

Then the early twilight fell. Mrs. Danner lay with her lank black
hair plastered to her brow. She did not moan. Pain twisted and
convulsed her. Downstairs Danner sat and sweated. A cry--his wife's.
Another--unfamiliar. Scurrying feet on the bare parts of the floor. He
looked up. Mrs. Nolan leaned over the stair well.

"It's a boy, Mr. Danner. A beautiful boy. And husky. You never saw such
a husky baby."

"It ought to be," he said. They found him later in the back yard,
prancing on the snow with weird, ungainly steps. A vacant smile lighted
his features. They didn't blame him.

Calm and quiet held their negative sway over the Danner ménage for an
hour, and then there was a disturbed fretting that developed into a
lusty bawl. The professor passed a fatigued hand over his brow. He was
unaccustomed to the dissonances of his offspring. Young Hugo--they had
named him after a maternal uncle--had attained the age of one week
without giving any indication of unnaturalness.

That is not quite true. He was as fleshy as most healthy infants, but
the flesh was more than normally firm. He was inordinately active. His
eyes had been gray but, already, they gave promise of the inkiness they
afterwards exhibited. He was born with a quantity of black hair--hair so
dark as to be nearly blue. Abednego Danner, on seeing it, exercised the
liberty which all husbands take, and investigated rumours of his wife's
forbears with his most secret thoughts. The principal rumour was that
one of her lusty Covenanter grandsires had been intrigued by a squaw to
the point of forgetting his Psalms and recalling only the Song of
Solomon.

However that may have been, Hugo was an attractive and virile baby.
Danner spent hours at the side of his crib speculating and watching for
any sign of biological variation. But it was not until a week had passed
that he was given evidence. By that time he was ready to concede the
failure of his greatest experiment.

The baby bawled and presently stopped. And Mrs. Danner, who had put it
to breast, suddenly called her husband. "Abednego! Come here! Hurry!"

The professor's heart skipped its regular timing and he scrambled to the
floor above. "What's the matter?"

Mrs. Danner was sitting in a rocking-chair. Her face was as white as
paper. Only in her eyes was there a spark of life. He thought she was
going to faint. "What's the matter?" he said again.

He looked at Hugo and saw nothing terrifying in the ravishing hunger
which the infant showed.

"Matter! Matter! You know the matter!"

Then he knew and he realized that his wife had discovered. "I don't. You
look frightened. Shall I bring some water?"

Mrs. Danner spoke again. Her voice was icy, distant, terrible. "I came
in to feed him just a minute ago. He was lying in his crib. I tried
to--to hug him and he put his arms out. As God lives, I could not pull
that baby to me! He was too strong, Abednego! Too strong. Too strong. I
couldn't unbend his little arms when he stiffened them. I couldn't
straighten them when he bent them. And he pushed me--harder than you
could push. Harder than I could push myself. I know what it means. You
have done your horrible thing to my baby. He's just a baby, Abednego.
And you've done your thing to him. How could you? Oh, how could you!"

Mrs. Danner rose and laid the baby gently on the chair. She stood before
her husband, towering over him, raised her hand, and struck with all her
force. Mr. Danner fell to one knee, and a red welt lifted on his face.
She struck him again and he fell against the chair. Little Hugo was
dislodged. One hand caught a rung of the chair back and he hung
suspended above the floor.

"Look!" Mrs. Danner screamed.

As they looked, the baby flexed its arm and lifted itself back into the
chair. It was a feat that a gymnast would have accomplished with
difficulty. Danner stared, ignoring the blows, the crimson on his cheek.
For once in his lifetime, he suddenly defied his wife. He pointed to the
child.

"Yes, look!" His voice rang clearly. "I did it. I vaccinated you the
night the cordial put you to sleep. And there's my son. He's strong.
Stronger than a lion's cub. And he'll increase in strength as he grows
until Samson and Hercules would be pygmies beside him. He'll be the
first of a new and glorious race. A race that doesn't have to
fear--because it cannot know harm. No man can hurt him, no man can
vanquish him. He will be mightier than any circumstances. He, son of a
weak man, will be stronger than the beasts, even than the ancient
dinosaurs, stronger than the tides, stronger than fate--strong as God is
strong. And you--you, Matilda--mother of him, will be proud of him. He
will be great and famous. You can knock me down. You can knock me down a
thousand times. I have given you a son whose little finger you cannot
bend with a crow-bar. Oh, all these years I've listened to you and
obeyed you and--yes, I've feared you a little--and God must hate me for
it. Now take your son. And my son. You cannot change him. You cannot
bend him to your will. He is all I might have been. All that mankind
should be." Danner's voice broke and he sobbed. He relented. "I know
it's hard for you. It's against your religion--against your love, even.
But try to like him. He's no different from you and me--only stronger.
And strength is a glorious thing, a great thing. Then--afterwards--if
you can--forgive me." He collapsed.

Blood pounded in her ears. She stared at the huddled body of her
husband. He had stood like a prophet and spoken words of fire. She was
shaken from her pettiness. For one moment she had loved Danner. In that
same instant she had glimpsed the superhuman energy that had driven him
through the long years of discouragement to triumph. She had seen his
soul. She fell at his feet, and when Danner opened his eyes, he found
her there, weeping. He took her in his arms, timidly, clumsily. "Don't
cry, Mattie. It'll be all right. You love him, don't you?"

She stared at the babe. "Of course I love him. Wash your face,
Abednego."

After that there was peace in the house, and with it the child grew.
During the next months they ignored his peculiarities. When they found
him hanging outside his crib, they put him back gently. When he smashed
the crib, they discussed a better place for him to repose. No hysteria,
no conflict. When, in the early spring, young Hugo began to recognize
them and to assert his feelings, they rejoiced as all parents rejoice.

When he managed to vault the sill of the second-story window by some
antic contortion of his limbs, they dismissed the episode. Mrs. Danner
had been baking. She heard the child's voice and it seemed to come from
the yard. Startled, incredulous, she rushed upstairs. Hugo was not in
his room. His wail drifted through the window. She looked out. He was
lying in the yard, fifteen feet below. She rushed to his side. He had
not been hurt.

Danner made a pen of the iron heads and feet of two old beds. He wired
them together. The baby was kept in the inclosure thus formed. The days
warmed and lengthened. No one except the Danners knew of the prodigy
harboured by their 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 could not realize that those
emotions sprang from personal and group jealousy, from the hatred of
superiority.

His mother, ever zealous to direct her son in the path of righteousness,
talked to him often about his strength and how great it would become and
what great and good deeds he could do with it. Those lectures on
virtuous crusades had two uses: they helped check any impulses in her
son which she felt would be harmful to her and they helped her to
become used to the abnormality in little Hugo. In her mind, it was like
telling a hunchback that his hump was a blessing disguised. Hugo was
always aware of the fact that her words connoted some latent evil in his
nature.

The motif grew in Mrs. Danner's thoughts until she sought a definite
outlet for it. One day she led her child to a keg filled with sand. "All
of us," she said to her son, "have to carry a burden through life. One
of your burdens will be your strength. But that might can make right.
See that little keg?"

"Mmmmm."

"That keg is temptation. Can you say it?"

"Temshun."

"Every day in your life you must bear temptation and throw it from you.
Can you bear it?"

"Huh?"

"Can you pick up that keg, Hugo?"

He lifted it in his chubby arms. "Now take it to the barn and back," his
mother directed. Manfully he walked with the keg to the barn and back.
He felt a little silly and resentful. "Now--throw temptation as far away
from you as you can."

Mrs. Danner gasped. The distance he threw the keg was frightening.

"You musn't throw it so far, Hugo," she said, forgetting her allegory
for an instant.

"You said as far as I can. I can throw it farther, too, if I wanna."

"No. Just throw it a little way. When you throw it far, it doesn't look
right. Now--fill it up with sand, and we'll do it over."

Hugo was perplexed. A vague wish to weep occupied him as he filled the
keg. The lesson was repeated. Mrs. Danner had excellent Sunday-school
instincts, even if she had no real comprehension of ethics. Some days
later the burden of temptation was exhibited, in all its dramatic
passages, to Mrs. Nolan and another lady. Again Hugo was resentful and
again he felt absurd. When he threw the keg, it broke.

"My!" Mrs. Nolan said in a startled tone.

"How awful!" the other woman murmured. "And he's just a child."

That made Hugo suddenly angry and he jumped. The woman screamed. Mrs.
Nolan ran to tell whomever she could find. Mrs. Danner whipped her son
and he cried softly.

Abednego Danner left the discipline of his son to his wife. He watched
the child almost furtively. When Hugo was five, Mr. Danner taught him to
read. It was a laborious process and required an entire winter. But Hugo
emerged with a new world open to him--a world which he attacked with
interest. No one bothered him when he read. He could be found often on
sunny days, when other children were playing, prone on the floor,
puzzling out sentences in the books of the family library and trying to
catch their significance. During his fifth year he was not allowed to
play with other children. The neighbourhood insisted on that.

With the busybodyness and contrariness of their kind the same neighbours
insisted that Hugo be sent to school in the following fall. When, on the
opening day, he did not appear, the truant officer called for him. Hugo
heard the conversation between the officer and his mother. He was
frightened. He vowed to himself that his abnormality should be hidden
deeply.

After that he was dropped into that microcosm of human life to which so
little attention is paid by adults. School frightened and excited Hugo.
For one thing, there were girls in school--and Hugo knew nothing about
them except that they were different from himself. There were
teachers--and they made one work, whether one wished to work or not.
They represented power, as a jailer represents power. The children
feared teachers. Hugo feared them.

But the lesson of Hugo's first six years was fairly well planted. He
blushingly ignored the direct questions of those children whom his fame
had reached. He gave no reason to anyone for suspecting him of
abnormality. He became so familiar to his comrades that their curiosity
gradually vanished. He would not play games with them--his mother had
forbidden that. But he talked to them and was as friendly as they
allowed him to be. His sensitiveness and fear of ridicule made him a
voracious student. He liked books. He liked to know things and to learn
them.

Thus, bound by the conditionings of his babyhood, he reached the spring
of his first year in school without accident. Such tranquillity could
not long endure. The day which his mother had dreaded ultimately
arrived. A lanky farmer's son, older than the other children in the
first grade, chose a particularly quiet and balmy recess period to
plague little Hugo. The farmer's boy was, because of his size, the bully
and the leader of all the other boys. He had not troubled himself to
resent Hugo's exclusiveness or Hugo's reputation until that morning when
he found himself without occupation. Hugo was sitting in the sun, his
dark eyes staring a little sadly over the laughing, rioting children.

The boy approached him. "Hello, strong man." He was shrewd enough to
make his voice so loud as to be generally audible. Hugo looked both
harmless and slightly pathetic.

"I'm not a strong man."

"Course you're not. But everybody thinks you are--except me. I'm not
afraid of you."

"I don't want you to be afraid of me. I'm not afraid of you, either."

"Oh, you aren't, huh? Look." He touched Hugo's chest with his finger,
and when Hugo looked down, the boy lifted his finger into Hugo's face.

"Go away and let me alone."

The tormentor laughed. "Ever see a fish this long?"

His hands indicated a small fish. Involuntarily Hugo looked at them.
The hands flew apart and slapped him smartly. Several of the children
had stopped their play to watch. The first insult made them giggle. The
second brought a titter from Anna Blake, and Hugo noticed that. Anna
Blake was a little girl with curly golden hair and blue eyes. Secretly
Hugo admired her and was drawn to her. When she laughed, he felt a
dismal loneliness, a sudden desertion. The farmer's boy pressed the
occasion his meanness had made.

"I'll bet you ain't even strong enough to fight little Charlie Todd.
Commere, Charlie."

"I am," Hugo replied with slow dignity.

"You're a sissy. You're a-scared to play with us."

The ring around Hugo had grown. He felt a tangible ridicule in it. He
knew what it was to hate. Still, his inhibitions, his control, held him
in check. "Go away," he said, "or I'll hurt you."

The farmer's boy picked up a stick and put it on his shoulder. "Knock
that off, then, strong man."

Hugo knew the dare and its significance. With a gentle gesture he
brushed the stick away. Then the other struck. At the same time he
kicked Hugo's shins. There was no sense of pain with the kick. Hugo saw
it as if it had happened to another person. The school-yard tensed with
expectation. But the accounts of what followed were garbled. The
farmer's boy fell on his face as if by an invisible agency. Then his
body was lifted in the air. The children had an awful picture of Hugo
standing for a second with the writhing form of his attacker above his
head. Then he flung it aside, over the circle that surrounded him, and
the body fell with a thud. It lay without moving. Hugo began to whimper
pitifully.

That was Hugo's first fight. He had defended himself, and it made him
ashamed. He thought he had killed the other boy. Sickening dread filled
him. He hurried to his side and shook him, calling his name. The other
boy came to. His arm was broken and his sides were purpling where Hugo
had seized him. There was terror in his eyes when he saw Hugo's face
above him, and he screamed shrilly for help. The teacher came. She sent
Hugo to the blacksmith to be whipped.

That, in itself, was a stroke of genius. The blacksmith 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 her blindness and the many cloaks that
protected her and her interests. He held her in respect and he obeyed
her. But often and wistfully he had tried to talk to his father, to make
friends with him, to make himself felt as a person.

Abednego Danner's mind was buried in the work he had done. His son was a
foreign person for whom he felt a perplexed sympathy. It is significant
that he had never talked to Hugo about Hugo's prowess. The ten-year-old
boy had not wished to discuss it. Now, however, realizing its extent, he
felt he must go to his father. After dinner he said: "Dad, let's you and
me take a walk."

Mrs. Danner's protective impulses functioned automatically. "Not
to-night. I won't have it."

"But, mother--"

Danner guessed the reason for that walk. He said to his wife with rare
firmness: "If the boy wants to walk with me, we're going."

After supper they went out. Mrs. Danner felt that she had been shut out
of her own son's world. And she realized that he was growing up.

Danner and his son strolled along the leafy street. They talked about
his work in school. His father seemed to Hugo more human than he had
ever been. He even ventured the first step toward other conversation.
"Well, son, what is it?"

Hugo caught his breath. "Well--I kind of thought I ought to tell you.
You see--this afternoon--well--you know I've always been a sort of
strong kid--"

Danner trembled. "I know--"

"And you haven't said much about it to me. Except to be gentle--"

"That's so. You must remember it."

"Well--I don't have to be gentle with myself, do I? When I'm alone--like
in the woods, that is?"

The older one pondered. "You mean--you like to--ah--let yourself
out--when you're alone?"

"That's what I mean." The usual constraint between them had receded.
Hugo was grateful for his father's help. "You see, dad, I--well--I went
walkin' to-day--and I--I kind of tried myself out."

Danner answered in breathless eagerness: "And?"

"Well--I'm not just a strong kid, dad. I don't know what's the matter
with me. It seems I'm not like other kids at all. I guess it's been
gettin' worse all these years since I was a baby."

"Worse?"

"I mean--I been gettin' stronger. An' now it seems like I'm
about--well--I don't like to boast--but it seems like I'm about the
strongest man in the world. When I try it, it seems like there isn't any
stopping me. I can go on--far as I like. Runnin'. Jumpin'." His
confession had commenced in detail. Hugo warmed to it. "I can do things,
dad. It kind of scares me. I can jump higher'n a house. I can run
faster'n a train. I can pull up big trees an' push 'em over."

"I see." Danner's spine tingled. He worshipped his son then. "Suppose
you show me."

Hugo looked up and down the street. There was no one in sight. The
evening was still duskily lighted by afterglow. "Look out then. I'm
gonna jump."

Mr. Danner saw his son crouch. But he jumped so quickly that he
vanished. Four seconds elapsed. He landed where he had stood. "See,
dad?"

"Do it again."

On the second trial the professor's eyes followed the soaring form. And
he realized the magnitude of the thing he had wrought.

"Did you see me?"

Danner nodded. "I saw you, son."

"Kind of funny, isn't it?"

"Let's talk some more." There was a pause. "Do you realize, son, that no
one else on earth can do what you just did?"

"Yeah. I guess not."

Danner hesitated. "It's a glorious thing. And dangerous."

"Yeah."

The professor tried to simplify the biology of his discovery. He
perceived that it was going to involve him in the mysteries of sex. He
knew that to unfold them to a child was considered immoral. But Danner
was far, far beyond his epoch. He put his hand on Hugo's shoulder. And
Hugo set off the process.

"Dad, how come I'm--like this?"

"I'll tell you. It's a long story and a lot for a boy your age to know.
First, what do you know about--well--about how you were born?"

Hugo reddened. "I--I guess I know quite a bit. The kids in school are
always talkin' about it. And I've read some. We're born like--well--like
the kittens were born last year."

"That's right." Banner knitted his brow. He began to explain the details
of conception as it occurs in man--the biology of ova and spermatazoa,
the differences between the anatomy of the sexes, and the reasons for
those differences. He drew, first, a botanical analogy. Hugo listened
intently. "I knew most of that. I've seen--girls."

"What?"

"Some of them--after school--let you."

Danner was surprised, and at the same time he was amused. He had
forgotten the details of his young investigation. They are blotted out
of the minds of most adults--to the great advantage of dignity. He did
not show his amusement or his surprise.

"Girls like that," he answered, "aren't very nice. They haven't much
modesty. It's rather indecent, because sex is a personal thing and
something you ought to keep for the one you're very fond of. You'll
understand that better when you're older. But what I was going to tell
you is this. When you were little more than a mass of plasm inside your
mother, I put a medicine in her blood that I had discovered. I did it
with a hypodermic needle. That medicine changed you. It altered the
structure of your bones and muscles and nerves and your blood. It made
you into a different tissue from the weak fibre of ordinary people.
Then--when you were born--you were strong. Did you ever watch an ant
carry many times its weight? Or see a grasshopper jump fifty times its
length? The insects have better muscles and nerves than we have. And I
improved your body till it was relatively that strong. Can you
understand that?"

"Sure. I'm like a man made out of iron instead of meat."

"That's it, Hugo. And, as you grow up, you've got to remember that.
You're not an ordinary human being. When people find that out,
they'll--they'll--"

"They'll hate me?"

"Because they fear you. So you see, you've got to be good and kind and
considerate--to justify all that strength. Some day you'll find a use
for it--a big, noble use--and then you can make it work and be proud of
it. Until that day, you have to be humble like all the rest of us. You
mustn't show off or do cheap tricks. Then you'd just be a clown. Wait
your time, son, and you'll be glad of it. And--another thing--train your
temper. You must never lose it. You can see what would happen if you
did? Understand?"

"I guess I do. It's hard work--doin' all that."

"The stronger, the greater, you are, the harder life is for you. And
you're the strongest of them all, Hugo."

The heart of the ten-year-old boy burned and vibrated. "And what about
God?" he asked.

Danner looked into the darkened sky. "I don't know much about Him," he
sighed.

Such was the soundest counsel that Hugo was given during his youth.
Because it came to him accompanied by unadulterated truths that he was
able to recognize, it exerted a profound effect on him. It is surprising
that his father was the one to give it. Nevertheless, Professor Danner
was the only person in all of Indian Creek who had sufficient
imagination to perceive his son's problems and to reckon with them in
any practical sense.

Hugo was eighteen before he gave any other indication of his strength
save in that fantastic and Gargantuan play which he permitted himself.
Even his play was intruded upon by the small-minded and curious world
before he had found the completeness of its pleasure. Then Hugo fell
into his coma.

Hugo went back to the deep forest to think things over and to become
acquainted with his powers. At first, under full pressure of his sinews,
he was clumsy and inaccurate. He learned deftness by trial and error.
One day he found a huge pit in the tangled wilderness. It had been an
open mine long years before. Sitting on its brink, staring into its pool
of verdure, dreaming, he conceived a manner of entertainment suitable
for his powers.

He jumped over its craggy edge and walked to its centre. There he
selected a high place, and with his hands he cleared away the growth
that covered it. Next he laid the foundations of a fort, over which he
was to watch the fastnesses for imaginary enemies. The foundations were
made of boulders. Some he carried and some he rolled from the floor of
the man-made canyon. By the end of the afternoon he had laid out a
square wall of rock some three feet in height. On the next day he added
to it until the four walls reached as high as he could stretch. He left
space for one door and he made a single window. He roofed the walls with
the trunks of trees and he erected a turret over the door.

For days the creation was his delight. After school he sped to it. Until
dark he strained and struggled with bare rocks. When it was finished, it
was an edifice that would have withstood artillery fire creditably. Then
Hugo experimented with catapults, but he found no engine that could hurl
the rocks he used for ammunition as far as his arms. He cached his
treasures in his fortress--an old axe, the scabbard of a sword, tops and
marbles, two cans of beans for emergency rations--and he made a flag of
blue and white cloth for himself.

Then he played in it. He pretended that Indians were stalking him. An
imaginary head would appear at the rim of the pit. Hugo would see it
through a chink. Swish! Crash! A puff of dust would show where rock met
rock--with the attacker's head between. At times he would be stormed on
all sides. To get the effect he would leap the canyon and hurl boulders
on his own fort. Then he would return and defend it.

It was after such a strenuous sally and while he was waiting in high
excitement for the enemy to reappear that Professors Whitaker and Smith
from the college stumbled on his stronghold. They were walking together
through the forest, bent on scaling the mountain to make certain
observations of an ancient cirque that was formed by the seventh great
glacier. As they walked, they debated matters of strata curvature.
Suddenly Whitaker gripped Smith's arm. "Look!"

They stared through the trees and over the lip of Hugo's mine. Their
eyes bulged as they observed the size and weight of the fortress.

"Moonshiners," Smith whispered.

"Rubbish. Moonshiners don't build like that. It's a second Stonehenge.
An Indian relic."

"But there's a sign of fresh work around it."

Whitaker observed the newly turned earth and the freshly bared rock.
"Perhaps--perhaps, professor, we've fallen upon something big. A lost
race of Indian engineers. A branch of the Incas--or--"

"Maybe they'll be hostile."

The men edged forward. And at the moment they reached the edge of the
pit, Hugo emerged from his fort. He saw the men with sudden fear. He
tried to hide.

"Hey!" they said. He did not move, but he heard them scrambling slowly
toward the spot where he lay.

"Dressed in civilized clothes," the first professor said in a loud voice
as his eye located Hugo in the underbrush. "Hey!"

Hugo showed himself. "What?"

"Who are you?"

"Hugo Danner."

"Oh--old Danner's boy, eh?"

Hugo did not like the tone in which they referred to his father. He made
no reply.

"Can you tell us anything about these ruins?"

"What ruins?"

They pointed to his fort. Hugo was hurt. "Those aren't ruins. I built
that fort. It's to fight Indians in."

The pair ignored his answer and started toward the fort. Hugo did not
protest. They surveyed its weighty walls and its relatively new roof.

"Looks recent," Smith said.

"This child has evidently renovated it. But it must have stood here for
thousands of years."

"It didn't. I made it--mostly last week."

They noticed him again. Whitaker simpered. "Don't lie, young man."

Hugo was sad. "I'm not lying. I made it. You see--I'm strong." It was as
if he had pronounced his own damnation.

"Tut, tut." Smith interrupted his survey. "Did you find it?"

"I built it."

"I said"--the professor spoke with increasing annoyance--"I said not to
tell me stories any longer. It's important, young man, that we know just
how you found this dolmen and in what condition."

"It isn't a dolly--whatever you said--it's a fort and I built it and I'm
not lying."

The professor, in the interests of science, made a grave mistake. He
seized Hugo by the arms and shook him. "Now, see here, young man, I'll
have no more of your impertinent lip. Tell me just what you've done to
harm this noble monument to another race, or, I swear, I'll slap you
properly." The professor had no children. He tried, at the same time,
another tack, which insulted Hugo further. "If you do, I'll give you a
penny--to keep."

Hugo wrenched himself free with an ease that startled Smith. His face
was dark, almost black. He spoke slowly, as if he was trying to piece
words into sense. "You--both of you--you go away from here and leave me
or I'll break your two rotten old necks."

Whitaker moved toward him, and Smith interceded. "We better leave
him--and come back later." He was still frightened by the strength in
Hugo's arms. "The child is mad. He may have hydrophobia. He might bite."
The men moved away hastily. Hugo watched them climb the wall. When they
reached the top, he called gently. They wheeled.

And Hugo, sobbing, tears streaming from his face, leaped into his fort.
Rocks vomited themselves from it--huge rocks that no man could budge.
Walls toppled and crashed. The men began to move. Hugo looked up. He
chose a stone that weighed more than a hundred pounds.

"Hey!" he said. "I'm not a liar!" The rock arched through the air and
Professors Whitaker and Smith escaped death by a scant margin. Hugo lay
in the wreck of the first thing his hands had built, and wept.

After a little while he sprang to his feet and chased the retreating
professors. When he suddenly appeared in front of them, they were
stricken dumb. "Don't tell any one about that or about me," he said. "If
you do--I'll break down your house just like I broke mine. Don't even
tell my family. They know it, anyhow."

He leaped. Toward them--over them. The forest hid him. Whitaker wiped
clammy perspiration from his brow. "What was it, Smith?"

"A demon. We can't mention it," he repeated, thinking of the warning.
"We can't speak of it anyway. They'll never believe us."

V

Extremely dark of hair, of eyes and skin, moderately tall, and shaped
with that compact, breath-taking symmetry that the male figure sometimes
assumes, a brilliantly devised, aggressive head topping his broad
shoulders, graceful, a man vehemently alive, a man with the promise of a
young God. Hugo at eighteen. His emotions ran through his eyes like hot
steel in a dark mould. People avoided those eyes; they contained a
statement from which ordinary souls shrank.

His skin glowed and sweated into a shiny red-brown. His voice was deep
and alluring. During twelve long and fierce years he had fought to know
and control himself. Indian Creek had forgotten the terrible child.

Hugo's life at that time revolved less about himself than it had during
his first years. That was both natural and fortunate. If his classmates
in school and the older people of the town had not discounted his early
physical precocity, even his splendid vitality might not have been
sufficient to prevent him from becoming moody and melancholy.

But when with the passage of time he tossed no more bullies, carried no
more barrels of temptation, built no more fortresses, and grew so
handsome that the matrons of Indian Creek as well as the adolescent
girls in high school followed him with wayward glances, when the men
found him a gay and comprehending companion for any sport or adventure,
when his teachers observed that his intelligence was often
embarrassingly acute, when he played on three teams and was elected an
officer in his classes each year, then that half of Hugo which was
purely mundane and human dominated him and made him happy.

His adolescence, his emotions, were no different from those of any young
man of his age and character. If his ultimate ambitions followed another
trajectory, he postponed the evidence of it. Hugo was in love with Anna
Blake, the girl who had attracted him when he was six. The residents of
Indian Creek knew it. Her family received his calls with the winking
tolerance which the middle class grants to young passion. And she was
warm and tender and flirtatious and shy according to the policies that
she had learned from custom.

The active part of Hugo did not doubt that he would marry her after he
had graduated from the college in Indian Creek, that they would settle
somewhere near by, and that they would raise a number of children. His
subconscious thoughts made reservations that he, in moments when he was
intimate with himself, would admit frankly. It made him a little ashamed
of himself to see that on one night he would sit with Anna and kiss her
ardently until his body ached, and on another he would deliberately plan
to desert her. His idealism at that time was very great and untried and
it did not occur to him that all men are so deliberately calculating in
the love they disguise as absolute.

Anna had grown into a very attractive woman. Her figure was rounded and
tall. Her hair was darker than the waxy curls of her childhood, and a
vital gleam had come into it. Her eyes were still as blue and her voice,
shorn of its faltering youngness, was sweet and clear. She was
undoubtedly the prettiest girl in high school and the logical
sweet-heart for Hugo Danner. A flower ready to be plucked, at eighteen.

When Hugo reached his senior year, that readiness became almost an
impatience. Girls married at an early age in Indian Creek. She looked
down the corridor of time during which he would be in college, she felt
the pressure of his still slumbering passion, and she sensed his
superiority over most of the town boys. Only a very narrow critic would
call her resultant tactics dishonourable. They were too intensely human
and too clearly born of social and biological necessity.

She had let him kiss her when they were sixteen. And afterwards, before
she went to sleep, she sighed rapturously at the memory of his warm,
firm lips, his strong, rough arms. Hugo had gone home through the
dizzily spinning dusk, through the wind-strummed trees and the fragrant
fields, his breath deep in his chest, his eyes hot and somewhat
understanding.

Gradually Anna increased that license. She knew and she did not know
what she was doing. She played a long game in which she said: "If our
love is consummated too soon, the social loss will be balanced by a
speedier marriage, because Hugo is honourable; but that will never
happen." Two years after that first kiss, when they were floating on the
narrow river in a canoe, Hugo unfastened her blouse and exposed the
creamy beauty of her bosom to the soft moonlight and she did not
protest. That night he nearly possessed her, and after that night he
learned through her unspoken, voluptuous suggestion all the technique of
love-making this side of consummation.

When, finally, he called one night at her house and found that she was
alone and that her parents and her brother would not return until the
next day, they looked at each other with a shining agreement. He turned
the lights out and they sat on the couch in the darkness, listening to
the passing of people on the sidewalk outside. He undressed her. He
whispered halting, passionate phrases. He asked her if she was afraid
and let himself be laughed away from his own conscience. Then he took
her and loved her.

Afterwards, going home again in the gloom of late night, he looked up at
the stars and they stood still. He realized that a certain path of life
had been followed to its conclusion. He felt initiated into the adult
world. And it had been so simple, so natural, so sweet.... He threw a
great stone into the river and laughed and walked on, after a while.

Through the summer that followed, Hugo and Anna ran the course of their
affair. They loved each other violently and incessantly and with no
other evil consequence than to invite the open "humphs" of village
gossips and to involve him in several serious talks with her father.
Their courtship was given the benefit of conventional doubt, however,
and their innocence was hotly if covertly protested by the Blakes. Mrs.
Danner coldly ignored every fragment of insinuation. She hoped that Hugo
and Anna would announce their engagement and she hinted that hope. Hugo
himself was excited and absorbed. Occasionally he thought he was
sterile, with an inclination to be pleased rather than concerned if it
was true.

He added tenderness to his characteristics. And he loved Anna too much.
Toward the end of that summer she lost weight and became irritable. They
quarrelled once and then again. The criteria for his physical conduct
being vague in his mind, Hugo could not gauge it correctly. And he did
not realize that the very ardour of his relation with her was abnormal.
Her family decided to send her away, believing the opposite of the truth
responsible for her nervousness and weakness. A week before she left,
Hugo himself tired of his excesses.

One evening, dressing for a last passionate rendezvous, he looked in his
mirror as he tied his scarf and saw that he was frowning. Studying the
frown, he perceived with a shock what made it. He did not want to see
Anna, to take her out, to kiss and rumple and clasp her, to return
thinking of her, feeling her, sweet and smelling like her. It annoyed
him. It bored him. He went through it uneasily and quarrelled again. Two
days later she departed.

He acted his loss well and she did not show her relief until she sat on
the train, tired, shattered, and uninterested in Hugo and in life. Then
she cried. But Hugo was through. They exchanged insincere letters. He
looked forward to college in the fall. Then he received a letter from
Anna saying that she was going to marry a man she had met and known for
three weeks. It was a broken, gasping, apologetic letter. Every one was
outraged at Anna and astounded that Hugo bore the shock so courageously.

The upshot of that summer was to fill his mind with fetid memories,
which abated slowly, to make him disgusted with himself and tired of
Indian Creek. He decided to go to a different college, one far away from
the scene of his painful youth and his disillusioned maturity. He chose
Webster University because of the greatness of its name. If Abednego
Danner was hurt at his son's defection from his own college, he said
nothing. And Mrs. Danner, grown more silent and reserved, yielded to her
son's unexpected decision.

Hugo packed his bags one September afternoon, with a feeling of
dreaminess. He bade farewell to his family. He boarded the train. His
mind was opaque. The spark burning in it was one of dawning adventure
buried in a mass of detail. He had never been far from his native soil.
Now he was going to see cities and people who were almost foreign, in
the sophisticated East. But all he could dwell on was a swift cinema of
a defeated little boy, a strong man who could never be strong, a
surfeited love, a truant and dimly comprehensible blonde girl, a muddy
street and a red station, a clapboard house, a sonorous church with
hushed puppets in the pews, fudge parties, boats on the little river,
cold winter, and ice over the mountains, and a fortress where once upon
a time he had felt mightier than the universe.

VI

The short branch line to which Hugo changed brought him to the fringe of
the campus. The cars were full of boys, so many of them that he was
embarrassed. They all appeared to know each other, and no one spoke to
him. His dreams on the train were culminated. He had decided to become a
great athlete. With his mind's eye, he played the football he would
play--and the baseball. Ninety-yard runs, homers hit over the fence into
oblivion. Seeing the boys and feeling their lack of notice of him
redoubled the force of that decision. Then he stepped on to the station
platform and stood facing the campus. He could not escape a rush of
reverence and of awe; it was so wide, so green and beautiful. Far away
towered the giant arches of the stadium. Near by were the sharp Gothic
points of the chapel and the graduate college. Between them a score or
more of buildings rambled in and out through the trees.

"Hey!"

Hugo turned a little self-consciously. A youth in a white shirt and
white trousers was beckoning to him. "Freshman, aren't you?"

"Yes. My name's Danner. Hugo Danner."

"I'm Lefty Foresman. Chuck!" A second student separated himself from the
bustle of baggage and young men. "Here's a freshman."

Hugo waited with some embarrassment. He wondered why they wanted a
freshman. Lefty introduced Chuck and then said: "Are you strong,
freshman?"

For an instant he was stunned. Had they heard, guessed? Then he realized
it was impossible. They wanted him to work. They were going to haze him.
"Sure," he said.

"Then get this trunk and I'll show you where to take it."

Hugo was handed a baggage check. He found the official and located the
trunk. Tentatively he tested its weight, as if he were a normally husky
youth about to undertake its transportation. He felt pleased that his
strength was going to be tried so accidentally and in such short order.
Lefty and Chuck heaved the trunk on his back. "Can you carry it?" they
asked.

"Sure."

"Don't be too sure. It's a long way."

Peering from beneath the trunk under which he bent with a fair
assumption of human weakness, Hugo had his first close glimpse of
Webster. They passed under a huge arch and down a street lined with
elms. Students were everywhere, carrying books and furniture, moving in
wheelbarrows and moving by means of the backs of other freshmen. The two
who led him were talking and he listened as he plodded.

"Saw Marcia just before I left the lake--took her out one night--and got
all over the place with her--and then came down--she's coming to the
first prom with me--and Marj to the second--got to get some beer
in--we'll buzz out and see if old Snorenson has made any wine this
summer. Hello, Eddie--glad to see you back--I've elected the dean's
physics, though, God knows, I'll never get a first in them and I need it
for a key. That damn Frosh we picked up sure must have been a
porter--hey, freshmen! Want a rest?"

"No, thanks."

"Went down to the field this afternoon--looks all right to me. The team,
that is. Billings is going to quarter it now--and me after that--hope to
Christ I make it--they're going to have Scapper and Dwan back at Yale
and we've got a lot of work to do. Frosh! You don't need to drag that
all the way in one yank. Put it down, will you?"

"I'm not tired. I don't need a rest."

"Well, you know best--but you ought to be tired. I would. Where do you
come from?"

"Colorado."

"Huh! People go to Colorado. Never heard of any one coming from there
before. Whereabouts?"

"Indian Creek."

"Oh." There was a pause. "You aren't an Indian, are you?" It was asked
bluntly.

"Scotch Presbyterian for twenty generations."

"Well, when you get through here, you'll be full of Scotch and emptied
of the Presbyterianism. Put the trunk down."

Their talk of women, of classes, of football, excited Hugo. He was not
quite as amazed to find that Lefty Foresman was one of the candidates
for the football team as he might have been later when he knew how many
students attended the university and how few, relatively, were athletes.
He decided at once that he liked Lefty. The sophistication of his talk
was unfamiliar to Hugo; much of it he could not understand and only
guessed. He wanted Lefty to notice him. When he was told to put the
trunk down, he did not obey. Instead, with precision and ease, he swung
it up on his shoulder, held it with one hand and said in an unflustered
tone: "I'm not tired, honestly. Where do we go from here?"

"Great howling Jesus!" Lefty said, "what have we here? Hey! Put that
trunk down." There was excitement in his voice. "Say, guy, do that
again."

Hugo did it. Lefty squeezed his biceps and grew pale. Those muscles in
action lost their feel of flesh and became like stone. Lefty said: "Say,
boy, can you play football?"

"Sure," Hugo said.

"Well, you leave that trunk with Chuck, here, and come with me."

Hugo did as he had been ordered and they walked side by side to the
gymnasium. Hugo had once seen a small gymnasium, ill equipped and badly
lighted, and it had appealed mightily to him. Now he stood in a
prodigious vaulted room with a shimmering floor, a circular balcony, a
varied array of apparatus. His hands clenched. Lefty quit him for a
moment and came back with a man who wore knickers. "Mr. Woodman, this
is--what the hell's your name?"

"Danner. Hugo Danner."

"Mr. Woodman is football coach."

Hugo took the man's hand. Lefty excused himself. Mr. Woodman said:
"Young Foresman said you played football."

"Just on a high-school team in Colorado."

"Said you were husky. Go in my office and ask Fitzsimmons to give you a
gym suit. Come out when you're ready."

Hugo undressed and put on the suit. Fitzsimmons, the trainer, looked at
him with warm admiration. "You're sure built, son."

"Yeah. That's luck, isn't it?"

Then Hugo was taken to another office. Woodman asked him a number of
questions about his weight, his health, his past medical history. He
listened to Hugo's heart and then led him to a scale. Hugo had lied
about his weight.

"I thought you said one hundred and sixty, Mr. Danner?"

The scales showed two hundred and eleven, but it was impossible for a
man of his size and build to weigh that much. Hugo had lied
deliberately, hoping that he could avoid the embarrassment of being
weighed. "I did, Mr. Woodman. You see--my weight is a sort of freak. I
don't show it--no one would believe it--and yet there it is." He did not
go into the details of his construction from a plasm new to biology.

"Huh!" Mr. Woodman said. Together they walked out on the floor of the
gymnasium. Woodman called to one of the figures on the track who was
making slow, plodding circuits. "Hey, Nellie! Take this bird up and pace
him for a lap. Make it fast."

A little smile came at the corners of Hugo's mouth. Several of the men
in the gymnasium stopped work to watch the trial of what was evidently a
new candidate. "Ready?" Woodman said, and the runners crouched side by
side. "Set? Go!"

Nelson, one of the best sprinters Webster had had for years, dashed
forward. He had covered thirty feet when he heard a voice almost in his
ear. "Faster, old man."

Nelson increased. "Faster, boy, I'm passing you." The words were spoken
quietly, calmly. A rage filled Nelson. He let every ounce of his
strength into his limbs and skimmed the canvas. Half a lap. Hugo ran at
his side and Nelson could not lead him. The remaining half was not a
race. Hugo finished thirty feet in the lead.

Woodman, standing on the floor, wiped his forehead and bawled: "That the
best you can do, Nellie?"

"Yes, sir."

"What in hell have you been doing to yourself?"

Nelson drew a sobbing breath. "I--haven't--done--a thing. Time--that
man. He's--faster than the intercollegiate mark."

Woodman, still dubious, made Hugo run against time. And Hugo, eager to
make an impression and unguided by a human runner, broke the world's
record for the distance around the track by a second and three-fifths.
The watch in Woodman's hands trembled.

"Hey!" he said, uncertain of his voice, "come down here, will you?"

Hugo descended the spiral iron staircase. He was breathing with ease.
Woodman stared at him. "Lessee you jump."

Hugo was familiar with the distances for jumping made in track meets. He
was careful not to overdo his effort. His running jump was twenty-eight
feet, and his standing jump was eleven feet and some inches. Woodman's
face ran water. His eyes gleamed. "Danner," he said, "where did you get
that way?"

"What way?"

"I mean--what have you done all your life?"

"Nothing. Gone to school."

"Two hundred and eleven pounds," Woodman muttered, "run like an Olympic
champ--jump like a kangaroo--how's your kicking?"

"All right, I guess."

"Passing?"

"All right, I guess."

"Come on outside. Hey, Fitz! Bring a ball."

An hour later Fitzsimmons found Woodman sitting in his office. Beside
him was a bottle of whisky which he kept to revive wounded gladiators.
"Fitz," said Woodman, looking at the trainer with dazed eyes, "did you
see what I saw?"

"Yes, I did, Woodie."

"Tell me about it."

Fitzsimmons scratched his greying head. "Well, Woodie, I seen a young
man--"

"Saw, Fitz."

"I saw a young man come into the gym an' undress. He looked like an
oiled steam engine. I saw him go and knock hell out of three track
records without even losing his breath. Then I seen him go out on the
field an' kick a football from one end to the other an' pass it back.
That's what _I_ seen."

Woodman nodded his head. "So did I. But I don't believe it, do you?"

"I do. That's the man you--an' all the other coaches--have been wantin'
to see. The perfect athlete. Better in everything than the best man at
any one thing. Just a freak, Woodie--but, God Almighty, how New Haven
an' Colgate are goin' to feel it these next years!"

"Mebbe he's dumb, Fitz."

"Mebbe. Mebbe not."

"Find out."

Fitz wasted no time. He telephoned to the registrar's office. "Mr. H.
Danner," said the voice of a secretary, "passed his examinations with
the highest honours and was admitted among the first ten."

"He passed his entrance exams among the first ten," Fitzsimmons
repeated.

"God!" said Woodman, "it's the millennium!" And he took a drink.

Late in the afternoon of that day Hugo found his room in Thompson
Dormitory. He unpacked his carpet-bag and his straw suitcase. He checked
in his mind the things that he had done. It seemed a great deal for one
day--a complete alteration of his life. He had seen the dean and
arranged his classes: trigonometry, English, French, Latin, biology,
physics, economics, hygiene. With a pencil and a ruler he made a
schedule, which he pinned on the second-hand desk he had bought.

Then he checked his furniture: a desk, two chairs, a bed, bed-clothes, a
rug, sheets and blankets, towels. He hung his clothes in the closet. For
a while he looked at them attentively. They were not like the clothes of
the other students. He could not quite perceive the difference, but he
felt it, and it made him uncomfortable. The room to which he had been
assigned was pleasant. It looked over the rolling campus on two sides,
and both windows were framed in the leaves of nodding ivy.

It was growing dark. From a dormitory near by came the music of a banjo.
Presently the player sang and other voices joined with him. A warm and
golden sun touched the high clouds with lingering fire. Voices cried
out, young and vigorous. Hugo sighed. He was going to be happy at
Webster. His greatness was going to be born here.

At that time Woodman called informally on Chuck and Lefty. They were in
a heated argument over the decorative arrangement of various liquor
bottles when he knocked. "Come in!" they shouted in unison.

"Hello!"

"Oh, Woodie. Come in. Sit down. Want a drink--you're not in training?"

"No, thanks. Had one. And it would be a damn sight better if you birds
didn't keep the stuff around."

"It's Chuck's." Lefty grinned.

"All right. I came to see about that bird you brought to me--Danner."

"Was he any good?"

Woodman hesitated. "Fellows, if I told you how good he was, you wouldn't
believe me. He's so good--I'm scared of him."

"Whaddaya mean?"

"Just that. He gave Nellie thirty feet in a lap on the track."

"Great God!"

"He jumped twenty-eight and eleven feet--running and standing. He kicked
half a dozen punts for eighty and ninety yards and he passed the same
distance."

Lefty sat down on the window seat. His voice was hoarse. "That--can't be
done, Woodie."

"I know it. But he did it. But that isn't what makes me frightened. How
much do you think he weighs?"

"One fifty-five--or thereabouts."

Woodie shook his head. "No, Lefty, he weighs two hundred and eleven."

"Two eleven! He can't, Woodie. There's something wrong with your
scales."

"Not a thing."

The two students stared at each other and then at the coach. They were
able to grasp the facts intellectually, but they could not penetrate the
reactions of their emotions. At last Lefty said: "But that
isn't--well--it isn't human, Woodie."

"That's why I'm scared. Something has happened to this bird. He has a
disease of some kind--that has toughened him. Like Pott's disease, that
turns you to stone. But you wouldn't think it. There's not a trace of
anything on the surface. I'm having a blood test made soon. Wait till
to-morrow when you see him in action. It'll terrify you. Because you'll
have the same damned weird feeling I have--that he isn't doing one tenth
of what he can do--that he's really just playing with us all. By God, if
I was a bit superstitious, I'd throw up my job and get as much distance
between me and that bird as I could. I'm telling you simply to prepare
you. There's something mighty funny about him, and the sooner we find
out, the better."

Mr. Woodman left the dormitory. Lefty and Chuck stared at each other for
the space of a minute, and then, with one accord, they went together to
the registrar's office. There they found Hugo's address on the campus,
and in a few minutes they were at his door.

"Come in," Hugo said. He smiled when he saw Lefty and Chuck. "Want some
more trunks moved?"

"Maybe--later." They sat down, eying Hugo speculatively. Lefty acted as
spokesman. "Listen here, guy, we've just seen Woodie and he says you're
phenomenal--so much so that it isn't right."

Hugo reddened. He had feared that his exhibition was exaggerated by his
eagerness to impress the coach. He said nothing and Lefty continued:
"You're going to be here for four years and you're going to love this
place. You're going to be willing to die for it. All the rest of your
life the fact that you went to old Webster is going to make a
difference. But there's one thing that Webster insists on--and that's
fair play. And honesty--and courage. You've come from a little town in
the West and you're a stranger here. Understand, this is all in a spirit
of friendship. So far--we like you. We want you to be one of us. To
belong. You have a lot to learn and a long way to go. I'm being frank
because I want to like you. For instance, Chuck here is a millionaire.
My old man is no dead stick in the Blue Book. Things like that will be
different from what you've known before. But the important thing is to
be a square shooter. Don't be angry. Do you understand?"

Hugo walked to the window and looked out into the thickened gloom. He
had caught the worry, the repression, in Lefty's voice. The youth, his
merry blue eyes suddenly grave, his poised self abnormally disturbed,
had suggested a criticism of some sort. What was it? Hugo was hurt and a
little frightened. Would his college life be a repetition of Indian
Creek? Would the athletes and the others in college of his own age fear
and detest him--because he was superior? Was that what they meant? He
did not know. He was loath to offend Lefty and Chuck. But there seemed
no alternative to the risk. No one had talked to him in that way for a
long time. He sat on his bed. "Fellows," he said tersely, "I don't think
I know what you're driving at. Will you tell me?"

The roommates fidgeted. They did not know exactly, either. They had come
to fathom the abnormality in Hugo. Chuck lit a cigarette. Lefty smiled
with an assumed ease. "Why--nothing, Danner. You see--well--I'm
quarterback of the football team. And you'll probably be on it this
year--we haven't adopted the new idea of keeping freshmen off the
varsity. Just wanted to tell you those--well--those principles."

Hugo knew he had not been answered. He felt, too, that he would never in
his life give away his secret. The defences surrounding it had been too
immutably fixed. His joy at knowing that he had been accepted so soon as
a logical candidate for the football team was tempered by this
questioning. "I have principles, fellows."

"Good." Lefty rose. "Guess we'll be going. By the way, Woodie said you
smashed a couple of track records to-day. Where'd you learn?"

"Nowhere."

"How come, then?"

"Just--natural."

Lefty summoned his will. "Sure it isn't--well--unhealthy. Woodie says
there are a couple of diseases that make you--well--get tough--like
stone."

Hugo realized the purpose of the visit. "Then--be sure I haven't any
diseases. My father had an M.D." He smiled awkwardly. "Ever since I was
a kid, I've been stronger than most people. And I probably have a little
edge still. Just an accident, that's all. Is that what you were
wondering about?"

Lefty smiled with instant relief. "Yes, it is. And I'm glad you take it
that way. Listen--why don't you come over to the Inn and take dinner
with Chuck and me? Let commons go for to-night. What say?"

At eleven Hugo wound his alarm clock and set it for seven. He yawned
and smiled. All during supper he had listened to the glories of Webster
and the advantages of belonging to the Psi Delta fraternity, to
descriptions of parties and to episodes with girls. Lefty and Chuck had
embraced him in their circle. They had made suggestions about what he
should wear and whom he should know; they had posted him on the
behaviour best suited for each of his professors. They liked him and he
liked them, immensely. They were the finest fellows in the world.
Webster was a magnificent university. And he was going to be one of its
most glorious sons.

He undressed and went to bed. In a moment he slept, drawing in deep,
swift breaths. His face was smiling and his arm was extended, whether to
ward off shadows or to embrace a new treasure could not be told. In the
bright sunshine of morning his alarm jangled and he woke to begin his
career as an undergraduate.

VII

From the day of his arrival Webster University felt the presence of Hugo
Danner. Classes, football practice, hazing, fraternity scouting began on
that morning with a feverish and good-natured hurly-burly that, for a
time, completely bewildered him. Hugo participated in everything. He
went to the classroom with pleasure. It was never difficult for him to
learn and never easier than in those first few weeks. The professors he
had known (and he reluctantly included his own father) were dry-as-dust
individuals who had none of the humanities. And at least some of the
professors at Webster were brilliant, urbane, capable of all
understanding. Their lectures were like tonic to Hugo.

The number of his friends grew with amazing rapidity. It seemed that he
could not cross the campus without being hailed by a member of the
football team and presented to another student. The Psi Deltas saw to it
that he met the entire personnel of their chapter at Webster. Other
fraternities looked at him with covetous eyes, but Lefty Foresman, who
was chairman of the membership committee, let it be known that the Psi
Deltas had marked Hugo for their own. And no one refused their bid.

On the second Monday after college opened, Hugo went to the class
elections and found to his astonishment that he received twenty-eight
votes for president. A boy from a large preparatory school was elected,
but twenty-eight votes spoke well for the reputation he had gained in
that short time. On that day, too, he learned the class customs.
Freshmen had to wear black caps, black shoes and socks and ties. They
were not allowed to walk on the grass or to ride bicycles. The ancient
cannon in the center of the class square was defended annually by the
sophomores, and its theft was always attempted by the freshmen. No
entering class had stolen it in eight years. Those things amused Hugo.
They gave him an intimate feeling of belonging to his school. He wrote
to his parents about them.

Dean Aiken, the newly elected president of the freshman class,
approached Hugo on the matter of the cannon. "We want a gang of good
husky boys to pull it up some night and take it away. Are you with us?"

"Sure."

Left to his own considerations, Hugo recalled his promise and walked
across the campus with the object of studying the cannon. It was a
medium-sized piece of Revolutionary War vintage. It stood directly in
the rear of Webster Hall, and while Hugo regarded it, he noticed that
two sophomores remained in the vicinity. He knew that guard, changed
every two hours, would be on duty day and night until Christmas was
safely passed. Well, the cannon was secure. It couldn't be rolled away.
The theft of it would require first a free-for-all with the sophomores
and after a definite victory a mob assault of the gun. Hugo walked
closer to it.

"Off the grass, freshman!"

He wheeled obediently. One of the guards approached him. "Get off the
grass and stay off and don't look at that cannon with longing. It isn't
healthy for young freshmen."

Hugo grinned. "All right, fella. But you better keep a double guard on
that thing while I want it."

Two nights later, during a heavy rain that had begun after the fall of
dark, Hugo clad himself in a slicker and moved vaguely into the night.
Presently he reached the cannon yard, and in the shelter of an arch he
saw the sophomore guards. They smoked cigarettes, and one of them sang
softly. Day and night a pair of conscripted sentries kept watchful eyes
on the gun. A shout from either of them would bring the whole class
tumbling from its slumber in a very few moments. Hugo moved out of their
vision. The campus was empty.

He rounded Webster Hall, the mud sucking softly under his feet and the
rain dampening his face. From beneath his coat he took a flare and
lighted the fuse. He heard the two sophomores running toward it in the
thick murk. When they were very close, he stepped on to the stone
flagging, looked up into the cloudy sky, gathered himself, and leaped
over the three stories of Webster Hall. He landed with a loud thud ten
feet from the cannon. When the sophomores returned, after extinguishing
the flare, their cherished symbol of authority had vanished.

There was din on the campus. First the loud cries of two voices. Then
the screech of raised windows, the babble of more voices, and the rush
of feet that came with new gusts of rain. Flash-lights pierced the
gloom. Where the cannon had been, a hundred and then two hundred figures
gathered, swirled, organized search-parties, built a fire. Dawn came,
and the cannon was still missing. The clouds lifted. In the wan light
some one pointed up. There, on the roof of Webster Hall, with the
numerals of the freshman class painted on its muzzle, was the old
weapon. Arms stretched. An angry, incredulous hum waxed to a steady
pitch and waned as the sophomores dispersed.

In the morning, theory ran rife. The freshmen were tight-lipped,
pretending knowledge where they had none, exulting secretly. Dean Aiken
was kidnapped at noon and given a third degree, which extorted no
information. The theft of the cannon and its elevation to the roof of
the hall entered the annals of Webster legend. And Hugo, watching the
laborious task of its removal from the roof, seemed merely as pleased
and as mystified as the other freshmen.

So the autumn commenced. The first football game was played and Hugo
made a touchdown. He made another in the second game. They took him to
New York in November for the dinner that was to celebrate the entrance
of a new chapter to Psi Delta.

His fraternity had hired a private car. As soon as the college towers
vanished, the entertainment committee took over the party. Glasses were
filled with whisky and passed by a Negro porter. Hugo took his with a
feeling of nervousness and of excited anticipation. The coach had given
him permission to break training--advised it, in fact. And Hugo had
never tasted liquor. He watched the others, holding his glass gingerly.
They swallowed their drinks, took more. The effect did not seem to be
great. He smelled the whisky, and the smell revolted him.

"Drink up, Danner!"

"Never use the stuff. I'm afraid it'll throw me."

"Not you. Come on! Bottoms up!"

It ran into his throat, hot and steaming. He swallowed a thousand
needles and knew the warmth of it in his stomach. They gave another
glass to him and then a third. Some of the brothers were playing cards.
Hugo watched them. He perceived that his feet were loose on their ankles
and that his shoulders lurched. It would not do to lose control of
himself, he thought. For another man, it might be safe. Not for him. He
repeated the thought inanely. Some one took his arm.

"Nice work in the game last week. Pretty."

"Thanks."

"Woodie says you're the best man on the team. Glad you went Psi Delt.
Best house on the campus. Great school, Webster. You'll love it."

"Sure," Hugo said.

The railroad coach was twisting and writhing peculiarly. Hugo suddenly
wanted to be in the air. He hastened to the platform of the car and
stood on it, squinting his eyes at the countryside. When they reached
the Grand Central Terminal he was cured of his faintness. They rode to
the theatre in an omnibus and saw the matinée of a musical show. Hugo
had never realized that so many pretty girls could be gathered together
in one place. Their scant, glittering costumes flashed in his face. He
wanted them. Between the acts the fraternity repaired in a body to the
lavatory and drank whisky from bottles.

Hugo began to feel that he was living at last. He was among men,
sophisticated men, and learning to be like them. Nothing like the
_camaraderie_, the show, the liquor, in Indian Creek. He was wearing the
suit that Lefty Foresman had chosen for him. He felt well dressed, cool,
capable. He was intensely well disposed toward his companions. When the
show was over, he stood in the bright lights, momentarily depressed by
the disappearance of the long file of girls. Then he shouldered among
his companions and went out of the theatre riotously.

Two long tables were drawn up at the Raven, a restaurant famous for its
roast meats, its beer, and its lack of scruples about the behaviour of
its guests. The Psi Deltas took their places at the tables. The
dining-room they occupied was private. Hugo saw as if in a dream the
long rows of silverware, the dishes of celery and olives, and the ranks
of shining glasses. They sat. Waiters wound their way among them. There
was a song. The toastmaster, a New York executive who had graduated from
Webster twenty years before, understood the temper of his charge. He was
witty, ribald, genial.

He made a speech, but not too long a speech. He called on the president
of a bank, who rose totteringly and undid the toastmaster's good offices
by making too long a speech. Its reiterated "dear old Websters" were
finally lost in the ring and tinkle of glassware and cutlery.

At the end of the long meal Hugo realized that his being had undergone
change. Objects approached and receded before his vision. The voice of
the man sitting beside him came to his ears as if through water. His
mind continually turned upon itself in a sort of infatuated examination.
His attention could not be held even on his own words. He decided that
he was feverish. Then some one said: "Well, Danner, how do you like
being drunk?"

"Drunk?"

"Sure. You aren't going to tell me you're sober, are you?"

When the speaker had gone, Hugo realized that it was Chuck. There had
been no feeling of recognition. "I'm drunk!" he said.

"Some one give Danner a drink. He has illusions."

"Drunk! Why, this man isn't drunk. It's monstrous. He has a weakened
spine, that's all."

"I'm drunk," Hugo repeated. He knew then what it was to be drunk. The
toastmaster was rising again. Hugo saw it dimly.

"Fellows!" A fork banged on a glass. "Fellows!" There was a slow
increase in silence. "Fellows! It's eleven o'clock now. And I have a
surprise for you."

"Surprise! Hey, guys, shut up for the surprise!"

"Fellows! What I was going to say is this: the girls from the show we
saw this afternoon are coming over here--all thirty of 'em. We're going
up to my house for a real party. And the lid'll be off. Anything
goes--only anybody that fights gets thrown out straight off without an
argument. Are you on?"

The announcement was greeted by a stunned quiet which grew into a bellow
of approval. Plates and glasses were thrown on the floor. Lefty leaped
on to the table and performed a dance. The proprietor came in, looked,
and left hastily, and then the girls arrived.

They came through the door, after a moment of reluctant hesitation, like
a flood of brightly colored water. They sat down in the laps of the
boys, on chairs, on the edge of the disarrayed tables. They were served
with innumerable drinks as rapidly as the liquor could be brought. They
were working, that night, for the ten dollars promised to each one. But
they were working with college boys, which was a rest from the stream of
affluent and paunchy males who made their usual escort. Their gaiety was
better than assumed.

Hugo had never seen such a party or dreamed of one. His vision was
cleared instantly of its cobwebs. He saw three boys seize one girl and
turn her heels over head. A piano was moved in. She jumped up and
started dancing on the table. Then there was a voice at his side.

"Hello, good-looking. I could use that drink if you can spare it."

Hugo looked at the girl. She had brown hair that had been curled. Her
lips and cheeks were heavily rouged and the corners of her mouth turned
down in a sort of petulance or fatigue. But she was pretty. And her
body, showing whitely above her evening dress, was creamy and warm. He
gave the drink to her. She sat in his lap.

"Gosh," he whispered. She laughed.

"I saw her first," some one said, pulling at the girl's arm.

"Go 'way," Hugo shouted. He pushed the other from them. "What's your
name?"

"Bessie. What's yours?"

"Hugo."

The girl accepted two glasses from a waiter. They drained them, looking
at each other over the rims. "Got any money, Hugo?"

Hugo had. He carried on his person the total of his cash assets. Some
fifty dollars. "Sure. I have fifty dollars," he answered.

He felt her red lips against his ear. "Let's you and me duck this party
and have a little one of our own. I've got an apartment not far from
here."

He could hear the pounding of his heart. "Let's."

They moved unostentatiously from the room. Outside, in the hall, she
took his hand. They ran to the front door.

There was the echo of bedlam in his whirling mind when they walked
through the almost deserted street. She called to a taxi and they were
driven for several blocks. At a cheap dance hall they took a table and
drank more liquor. When his head was turned, she narrowed her eyes and
calculated the effect of the alcohol against the dwindling of his purse.
They danced.

"Gee, you're a swell dancer."

"So are you, Bessie."

"Still wanna go home with Bessie?"

"Mmmm."

"Let's go."

Another taxi ride. The lights seethed past him. A dark house and three
flights of rickety stairs. The gritty sound of a key in a lock. A little
room with a table, a bed, two chairs, a gas-light turned low, a
disheveled profusion of female garments.

"Here we are. Sit down."

Hugo looked at her tensely. He laughed then, with a harsh sound. She
flew into his arms, returning his searching caresses with startling
frankness. Presently they moved across the room. He could hear the
noises on the street at long, hot intervals.

Hugo opened his eyes and the light smote them with pain. He raised his
head wonderingly. His stomach crawled with a foul nausea. He saw the
dirty room. Bessie was not in it. He staggered to the wash-bowl and was
sick. He noticed then that her clothes were missing. The fact impressed
him as one that should have significance. He rubbed his head and eyes.
Then he thought accurately. He crossed the room and felt in his trousers
pockets. The money was gone.

At first it did not seem like a catastrophe. He could telegraph to his
father for more money. Then he realized that he was in New York, without
a ticket back to the campus, separated from his friends, and not knowing
the address of the toastmaster. He could not find his fraternity
brothers and he could not get back to school without more money.
Moreover, he was sick.

He dressed with miserable slowness and went down to the street. Served
him right. He had been a fool. He shrugged. A sharp wind blew out of a
bright sky.

Maybe, he thought, he should walk back to Webster. It was only eighty
miles and that distance could be negotiated in less than two hours by
him. But that was unwise. People would see his progress. He sat down in
Madison Square Park and looked at the Flatiron Building with a leisurely
eye. A fire engine surged up the street. A man came to collect the trash
in a green can. A tramp lay down and was ousted by a policeman.

By and by he realized that he was hungry. A little man with darting eyes
took a seat beside him. He regarded Hugo at short intervals. At length
he said. "You got a dime for a cup of coffee?" His words were blurred by
accent.

"No. I came here from school last night and my money was stolen."

"Ah," there was a tinge of discouragement in the other's voice. "And
hungry, perhaps?"

"A little."

"Me--I am also hungry. I have not eaten since two days."

That impressed Hugo as a shameful and intolerable circumstance. "Let's
go over there"--he indicated a small restaurant--"and eat. Then I'll
promise to send the money by mail. At least, we'll be fed that way."

"We will be thrown to the street on our faces."

"Not I. Nobody throws me on my face. And I'll look out for you."

They crossed the thoroughfare and entered the restaurant. The little man
ordered a quantity of food, and Hugo, looking guiltily at the waiter,
duplicated the order. They became distantly acquainted during the
filched repast. The little man's name was Izzie. He sold second-hand
rugs. But he was out of work. Eventually they finished. The waiter
brought the check. He was a large man, whose jowls and hips and
shoulders were heavily weighted with muscle.

Hugo stood up. "Listen, fellow," he began placidly, "my friend and I
haven't a cent between us. I'm Hugo Danner, from Webster University, and
I'll mail you the price of this feed to-morrow. I'll write down my name
and--"

He got no further. The waiter spoke in a thick voice. "So! One of them
guys, eh? Tryin' to get away with it when I'm here, huh? Well, I tell
you how you're gonna pay. You're gonna pay this check with a bloody
mush, see?" His fist doubled and drew back. Hugo did not shift his
position. The fist came forward, but an arm like stone blocked it.
Hugo's free hand barely flicked to the waiter's jaw. He rolled under the
table. "Come on," he said, but Izzie had already vanished through the
door.

Hugo walked hurriedly up the street and turned a corner. A hand tugged
at his coat. He turned and was confronted by Izzie. "I seen you through
the window. Jeest, guy, you kin box. Say, I know where you kin clean
up--if you got the nerve."

"Clean up? Where?"

"Come on. We better get out of here anyhow."

They made their way toward the river. The city changed character on the
other side of the elevated railroad, and presently they were walking
through a dirty, evil-smelling, congested neighborhood.

"Where are we going, Izzie?"

"Wait a minute, Mr. Danner."

"What's the idea?"

"You wait."

Another series of dirty blocks. Then they came to a bulky building that
spread a canopy over the sidewalk. "Here," Izzie said, and pointed.

His finger indicated a sign, which Hugo read twice. It said: "Battling
Ole Swenson will meet all comers in this gymnasium at three this
afternoon and eight to-night. Fifty dollars will be given to any man,
black or white, who can stay three rounds with him, and one hundred
dollars cash money to the man who knocks out Battling Ole Swenson, the
Terror of the Docks."

"See," Izzie said, rubbing his hands excitedly, "mebbe you could do it."

A light dawned on Hugo. He smiled. "I can," he replied. "What time is
it?"

"Two o'clock."

"Well, let's go."

They entered the lobby of the "gymnasium." "Mr. Epstein," Izzie called,
"I gotta fighter for the Swede."

Mr. Epstein was a pale fat man who ignored the handicap of the dank
cigar in his mouth and roared when he spoke. He glanced at Hugo and then
addressed Izzie. "Where is he?"

"There."

Epstein looked at Hugo and then was shaken by laughter. "There, you
says, and there I looks and what do I see but a pink young angel face
that Ole would swallow without chewing."

Hugo said: "I don't think so. I'm willing to try."

Epstein scowled. "Run away from here, kid, before you get hurt. Ole
would laugh at you. This isn't easy money. It takes a man to get a look
at it."

Izzie stamped impatiently. "I tell you, Mr. Epstein, I seen this boy
fight. He's the goods. He can beat your Ole. I bet he can." His voice
caught and he glanced nervously at Hugo. "I bet ten dollars he can."

"How much?" Epstein bellowed.

"Well--say twenty dollars."

"How much?"

"Fifty dollars. It's all I got, Epstein."

"All right--go in and sign up and leave your wad. Kid," he turned to
Hugo, "you may think you're husky, but Ole is a killer. He's six nine in
his socks and he weighs two hundred and eighty. He'll mash you."

"I don't think so," Hugo repeated.

"Well, you'll be meat. We'll put you second on the list. And the
lights'll go out fast enough for yuh."

Hugo followed Izzie and reached him in time to see a fifty-dollar bill
peeled from a roll which was extracted with great intricacy from Izzie's
clothes. "I thought you hadn't eaten for two days!"

"It's God's truth," Izzie answered uneasily. "I was savin' this
dough--an' it's lucky, too, isn't it?"

Hugo did not know whether to laugh or to be angry. He said: "And you'd
have let me take a poke in the jaw from that waiter. You're a hell of a
guy, Izzie."

Izzie moved his eyes rapidly. "I ain't so bad. I'm bettin' on you, ain't
I? An' I got you a chancet at the Swede, didn't I?"

"How'd you know that waiter couldn't kill me?"

"Well--he didn't. Anyhow, what's a poke in the jaw to a square meal,
eh?"

"When the other fellow gets the poke and you get the meal. All right,
Izzie. I wish I thought Ole was going to lick me."

Hugo wrote his name under a printed statement to the effect that the
fight managers were not responsible for the results of the combat. The
man who led him to a dressing-room was filled with sympathy and advice.
He told Hugo that one glance at Ole would discourage his reckless
avarice. But Hugo paid no attention. The room was dirty. It smelled of
sweat and rubber sneakers. He sat there for half an hour, reading a
newspaper. Outside, somewhere, he could hear the mumble of a gathering
crowd, punctuated by the voices of candy and peanut-hawkers.

At last they brought some clothes to him. A pair of trunks that flapped
over his loins, ill-fitting canvas shoes, a musty bath robe. When the
door of his room opened, the noise of the crowd was louder. Finally it
was hushed. He heard the announcer. It was like the voice of a minister
coming through the stained windows of a church. It rose and fell. Then
the distant note of the gong. After that the crowd called steadily,
sometimes in loud rage and sometimes almost in a whisper.

Finally they brought Ole's first victim into Hugo's cell. He was a man
with the physique of a bull. His face was cut and his eyes were
darkening. One of the men heaving his stretcher looked at Hugo.

"Better beat it, kid, while you can still do it on your own feet. You
ain't even got the reach for Ole. He's a grizzly, bo. He'll just about
kill you."

Hugo tightened his belt and swung the electric light back and forth with
a slow-moving fist. Another man expertly strapped his fists with
adhesive tape.

"When do I go out?" Hugo asked.

"You mean, when do you get knocked out?" the second laughed.

"Fight?"

"Well, if you're determined to get croaked, you do it now."

In the arena it was dazzling. A bank of noisy people rose on all sides
of him. Hugo walked down the aisle and clambered into the ring. Ole was
one of the largest men he had ever seen in his life. There was no doubt
of his six feet nine inches and his two hundred and eighty pounds. Hugo
imagined that the man was not a scientific fighter. A bruiser. Well, he
knew nothing of fighting, either.

A man in his shirt sleeves stood up in the ring and bellowed, "The next
contestant for the reward of fifty dollars to stay three rounds with
battling Ole and one hundred dollars to knock him out is Mr. H. Smith."
They cheered. It was a nasty sound, filled with the lust for blood. Hugo
realized that he was excited. His knees wabbled when he rose and his
hand trembled as he took the monstrous paw of the Swede and saw his
unpleasant smile. Hugo's heart was pounding. For one instant he felt
weak and human before Battling Ole. He whispered to himself: "Quit it,
you fool; you know better; you can't even be hurt." It did not make him
any more quiet.

Then they were sitting face to face. A bell rang. The hall became silent
as the mountainous Swede lumbered from his corner. He towered over Hugo,
who stood up and went out to meet him like David approaching Goliath. To
the crowd the spectacle was laughable. There was jeering before they
met. "Where's your mamma?" "Got your bottle, baby?" "Put the poor little
bastard back in his carriage." "What's this--a fight or a freak show?"
Laughter.

It was like cold water to Hugo. His face set. He looked at Ole. The
Swede's fist moved back like the piston of a great engine into which
steam has been let slowly. Then it came forward. Hugo, trained to see
and act in keeping with his gigantic strength, dodged easily. "Atta
boy!" "One for Johnny-dear!" The fist went back and came again and
again, as if that piston, gathering speed, had broken loose and was
flailing through the screaming air. Hugo dodged like a beam of light,
and the murderous weapon never touched him. The spectators began to
applaud his speed. He could beat the Swede's fist every time. "Run him,
kiddo!" "It's only three rounds."

The bell. Ole was panting. As he sat in his corner, his coal-scuttle
gloves dangling, he cursed in his native tongue. Too little to hit.
Bell. The second round was the same. Hugo never attempted to touch the
Swede. Only to avoid him. And the man worked like a Trojan. Sweat
seethed over his big, blank face. His small eyes sharpened to points. He
brought his whole carcass flinging through the air after his fist. But
every blow ended in a sickening wrench that missed the target. The crowd
grew more excited. During the interval between the second and third
rounds there was betting on the outcome. Three to one that Ole would
connect and murder the boy. Four to one. One to five that Hugo would win
fifty dollars before he died beneath the trip-hammer.

The third round opened. The crowd suddenly tired of the sport. A shrill
female voice reached Hugo's cold, concentrated mind: "Keep on running,
yellow baby!"

So. They wanted a killing. They called him yellow. The Swede was on him,
elephantine, sweating, sucking great, rumbling breaths of air, swinging
his fists. Hugo studied the motion. That fist to that side, up, down,
now!

Like hail they began to land upon the Swede. Bewilderingly, everywhere.
No hope of guarding. Every blow smashed, stung, ached. No chance to
swing back. Cover up. His arms went over his face. He felt rivets drive
into his kidneys. He reached out and clinched. They rocked in each
other's arms. Dazed by that bitter onslaught of lightning blows, Ole
thought only to lock Hugo in his arms and crush him. When they clinched,
the crowd, grown instantly hysterical, sank back in despair. It was
over. Ole could break the little man's back. They saw his arms spring
into knots. Jesus! Hugo's fist shot between their chests and Ole was
thrown violently backward. Impossible. He lunged back, crimson to kill,
one hand guarding his jaw. "Easy, now, for the love of God, easy," Hugo
said to himself. There. On the hand at the chin. Hugo's gloves went out.
Lift him! It connected. The Swede left the floor and crumpled slowly,
with a series of bumping sounds. And how the hyenas yelled!

They crowded into his dressing-room afterwards. Epstein came to his side
before he had dressed. "Come out and have a mug of suds, kid. That was
the sweetest fight I ever hope to live to see. I can sign you up for a
fortune right now. I can make you champ in two years."

"No, thanks," Hugo said.

The man persisted. He talked earnestly. He handed Hugo a hundred-dollar
bill. Hugo finished his dressing. Izzie wormed his way in. "Fifty
dollars I won yet! Didn't I tole you, Mr. Epstein!"

"Come here, Izzie!"

The little man ran to shake Hugo's hand, but it was extended for another
reason. "I want that fifty you won," he said unsmilingly. "When a bird
tracks along for a free feed and lets another guy fight for him and has
a roll big enough to stop up a rainspout, he owes money. That lunch will
set you back just exactly what you won on me."

There was laughter in the room. Izzie whimpered. "Ain't you got a
hundred all ready that I got for you? Ain't it enough that you got it?
Ain't I got a wife wit' kids yet?"

"No, it ain't, yet." Hugo snapped the fingers of his extended hand. The
other hand doubled significantly. Izzie gave him the money. He was
almost in tears. The others guffawed.

"Wait up, bo. Give us your address if you ever change your mind. You can
pick up a nice livin' in this game."

"No, thanks. All I needed was railroad fare. Thank you,
gentlemen--and--good-by."

No one undertook to hinder Hugo's departure.

VIII

Greatness seemed to elude Hugo, success such as he had earned was
inadequate, and his friendships as well as his popularity were tinged
with a sort of question that he never understood. By the end of winter
he was well established in Webster as a great athlete. Psi Delta sang
his praises and was envied his deeds. Lefty and Chuck treated him as a
brother. And, Hugo perceived, none of that treatment and none of that
society was quite real. He wondered if his personality was so meagre
that it was not equal to his strength. He wondered if his strength was
really the asset he had dreamed it would be, and if, perhaps, other
people were not different from him in every way, so that any close human
contact was impossible to him.

It was a rather tragic question to absorb a man so filled with life and
ambition as he. Yet every month had raised it more insistently. He saw
other men sharing their inmost souls and he could never do that. He saw
those around him breaking their hearts and their lungs for the
university, and, although it was never necessary for him to do that, he
doubted that he could if he would. Webster was only a school. A
sentiment rather than an ideal, a place rather than a goal of dreams. He
thought that he was cynical. He thought that he was inhuman. It worried
him.

His love was a similar experience. He fell in love twice during that
first year in college. Once at a prom with a girl who was related to
Lefty--a rich, socially secure girl who had studied abroad and who
almost patronized her cousin.

Hugo had seen her dancing, and her long, slender legs and arms had
issued an almost tangible challenge to him. She had looked over Lefty's
shoulder and smiled vaguely. They had met. Hugo danced with her. "I love
to come to a prom," she said; "it makes me feel young again."

"How old are you?"

She ignored the obvious temptation to be coy and he appreciated that.
"Twenty-one."

It seemed reasonably old to Hugo. The three years' difference in their
ages had given her a pinnacle of maturity.

"And that makes you old," he reflected.

She nodded. Her name was Iris. Afterwards Hugo thought that it should
have been Isis. Half goddess, half animal. He had never met with the
vanguard of emancipated American womanhood before then. "You're the
great Hugo Danner, aren't you? I've seen your picture in the sporting
sections." She read sporting sections. He had never thought of a woman
in that light. "But you're really much handsomer. You have more sex and
masculinity and you seem more intelligent."

Then, between the dances, Lefty had come. "She? Oh, she's a sort of
cousin. Flies in all the high altitudes in town. Blue Book and all that.
Better look out, Hugo. She plays rough."

"She doesn't look rough."