. It was just after school, one hot day, in the Illinois
September. Our crowd had gone down to the pond back of the school-house,
and two of us were paddling around on a raft made of sawmill slabs. One
of the two--who always had more dare-deviltry than sense under his skull
thatch--was silly enough to 'rock the boat,' and it went to pieces. You
couldn't swim, Howard, but if you hadn't forgotten that trifling
handicap and wallowed in to pull poor Billy Mimms ashore, I should have
been a murderer."

Lidgerwood shook his head.

"You think you have made your case, but you haven't. What you say is
true enough; I wasn't afraid of drowning--didn't think much about it,
either way, I guess. But what I say is true, also. There are many kinds
of courage, and quite as many kinds of cowardice. I am a coward of men."

"Oh, no, you're not: you only think you are," protested the one who
thought he knew. But Lidgerwood would not let that stand.

"I know I am. Hear me through, and then judge for yourself. What I am
going to tell you I have never told to any living man; but it is your
right to hear it.... I have had the symptoms all my life, Stuart. You
have spoken of the schoolboy days: you may remember how you used to
fight my battles for me. You thought I took the bullying of the bigger
boys because I wasn't strong enough physically to hold up my end. That
wasn't it: it was fear, pure and simple. Are you listening?"

The man in the chair nodded and said, "Go on." He was of those to whom
fear, the fear of what other men might do to him, was as yet a thing
unlearned, and he was trying to attain the point of view of one to whom
it seemed very real.

"It followed me up to manhood, and after a time I found myself
constantly and consciously deferring to it. It was easy enough after the
habit was formed. Twentieth-century civilization is decently peaceable,
and it isn't especially difficult to dodge the personal collisions. I
have succeeded in dodging them, for the greater part, paying the price
in humiliation and self-abasement as I went along. God, Stuart, you
don't know what that means!--the degradation; the hot and cold chills of
self-loathing; the sickening misery of having your own soul turn upon
you to rend and tear you like a rabid dog!"

"No, I don't know what it means," said the other man, moved more than he
cared to admit by the abject confession.

"Of course you don't. Nobody else can know. I am alone in my pit of
wretche