ugh
the door. Once as he was feeling his way along the wall, searching for
a light, his feet stumbled on a hard rounded object against the
wainscoting, and as it toppled over its contents ran with a slopping
gurgle over the floor.

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

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

[Illustration: "DRYAD, IT'S ALL RIGHT--IT'S ALWAYS BEEN ALL RIGHT--WITH
US! THEY LIED--THEY LIED AND THEY KNEW THEY WERE LYING!"]

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

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

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

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

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

"He never whipp