the only thing that makes life worth living. None
are happy, none are good, none are respectable, that are not gyved like
us. And I must tell you, besides, it is very dangerous talk. If you
grumble of your iron, you will have no luck; if you ever take it off,
you will be instantly smitten by a thunderbolt."

"Are there no thunderbolts for these strangers?" asked Jack.

"Jupiter is long-suffering to the benighted," returned the catechist.

"Upon my word, I could wish I had been less fortunate," said Jack. "For
if I had been born benighted, I might now be going free; and it cannot
be denied the iron is inconvenient, and the ulcer hurts."

"Ah!" cried his uncle, "do not envy the heathen! Theirs is a sad lot!
Ah, poor souls, if they but knew the joys of being fettered! Poor souls,
my heart yearns for them. But the truth is they are vile, odious,
insolent, ill-conditioned, stinking brutes, not truly human--for what
is a man without a fetter?--and you cannot be too particular not to
touch or speak with them."

After this talk, the child would never pass one of the unfettered on the
road but what he spat at him and called him names, which was the
practice of the children in that part.

It chanced one day, when he was fifteen, he went into the woods, and the
ulcer pained him. It was a fair day, with a blue sky; all the birds were
singing; but Jack nursed his foot. Presently, another song began; it
sounded like the singing of a person, only far more gay; at the same
time there was a beating on the earth. Jack put aside the leaves; and
there was a lad of his own village, leaping, and dancing and singing to
himself in a green dell; and on the grass beside him lay the dancer's
iron.

"O!" cried Jack, "you have your fetter off!"

"For God's sake, don't tell your uncle!" cried the lad.

"If you fear my uncle," returned Jack, "why do you not fear the
thunderbolt?"

"That is only an old wives' tale," said the other. "It is only told to
children. Scores of us come here among the woods and dance for nights
together, and are none the worse."

This put Jack in a thousand new thoughts. He was a grave lad; he had no
mind to dance himself; he wore his fetter manfully, and tended his ulcer
without complaint. But he loved the less to be deceived or to see others
cheated. He began to lie in wait for heathen travellers, at covert parts
of the road, and in the dusk of the day, so that he might speak with
them unseen; and these were gr