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.”