LITMIR.BIZ

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of boyish voices calling faintly one to another on the football field broke the painful spell.

      They were out there enjoying their sport and football practice, while Ben found himself alone, shunned, scorned, outcast. He seemed to see them gather about Hayden while Bern told the whole shameful story of the disgrace of the boy he hated. The whole story? – no, Ben knew his enemy would not tell it all. There were some things – one in particular – he would conveniently forget to mention; but he would not fail to paint in blackest colors the character of the lad he despised.

      Once Ben partly started up, thinking to hasten back to the field and defend his reputation against the attacks of his enemy; but almost immediately he sank down with a groan, well knowing such an effort on his part would be worse than useless. He was a stranger in Oakdale, unknown and friendless, while Hayden was well known there, and apparently popular among the boys. To go out there and face Hayden would earn for the accused lad only jeers and scorn and greater humiliation.

      “It’s all up with me here,” muttered the wretched fellow, still fumbling with his shoestrings and making no progress. “I can’t stay in the school; I’ll have to leave. If I’d known – if I’d even dreamed Hayden was here – I’d never come. I’ve never heard anything from Farmington since the night I ran away. I supposed Hayden was living there still. How does it happen that he is here? It was just my miserable fortune to find him here, that’s all! I was born under an unlucky star.”

      All his beautiful castles had crumbled to ruins. He was bowed beneath the weight of his despair and hopelessness. Then, of a sudden, fear seized him and held him fast.

      Bern Hayden had told the boys on the football field that once his father was ready to send Stone to the reformatory, which was true. To escape this fate, Ben had fled in the night from Farmington, the place of his birth. Nearly two years had passed, but he believed Lemuel Hayden to be a persistent and vindictive man; and, having found the fugitive, that man might reattempt to carry out his once-baffled purpose.

      Ben thrust his thick middle finger beneath the shoestrings and snapped them with a jerk. He almost tore off Eliot’s football clothes and flung himself into his own shabby garments.

      “I won’t stay and be sent to the reform school!” he panted. “I’d always feel the brand of it upon me. If others who did not know me could not see the brand, I’d feel it, just as I feel – ” He lifted his hand, and his fingers touched his mutilated left ear.

      A few moments later he left the gymnasium, walking out hurriedly, that feeling of fear still accompanying him. Passing the corner of the high board fence that surrounded the football field, his eyes involuntarily sought the open gate, through which he saw for a moment, as he hastened along, a bunch of boys bent over and packed together, saw a sudden movement as the football was passed, and then beheld them rush forward a short distance. They were practicing certain plays and formations. Among them he caught a glimpse of the supple figure of Bern Hayden.

      “I’d be there now, only for you!” was Ben’s bitter thought, as he hastened down the road.

      Behind him, far beyond Turkey Hill, the black clouds lay banked in the west. They had smothered the sun, which could show its face no more until another day. The woods were dark and still, while harsh shadows were creeping nearer from the distant pastures where cowbells tinkled. In the grass by the roadside crickets cried lonesomely.

      It was not cold, but Ben shivered and drew his poor coat about him. Besides the fear of being sent to a reformatory, the one thought that crushed him was that he was doomed forever to be unlike other boys, to have no friends, no companions – to be a pariah.

      CHAPTER III.

      ONE RAY OF LIGHT

      As he passed, he looked up at the academy, set far back in its yard of many maple trees, and saw that the great white door was closed, as if shut upon him forever. The leaden windows stared at him with silent disapproval; a sudden wind came and swung the half-open gate to the yard, which closed with a click, making it seem that an unseen hand had thrust it tight against him and held it barred.

      Farther along the street stood a square, old-fashioned, story-and-a-half house, with a more modern ell and shed adjoining, and a wretched sagging barn, that lurched on its foundations, and was only kept from toppling farther, and possibly falling, by long, crude timber props, set against its side. The front yard of the house was enclosed by a straggling picket fence. As well as the fence, the weather-washed buildings, with loose clapboards here and there, stood greatly in want of paint and repairs.

      This was the home of Mrs. Jones, a widow with three children to support, and here Ben had found a bare, scantily-furnished room that was within his means. The widow regarded as of material assistance in her battle against poverty the rent money of seventy-five cents a week, which her roomer had agreed to pay in advance.

      For all of her misfortune and the constant strain of her toil to keep the wolf from the door and a roof over the heads of herself and her children, Mrs. Jones was singularly happy and cheerful. It is true the wounds of the battle had left scars, but they were healed or hidden by this strong-hearted woman, who seldom referred to them save in a buoyant manner.

      Jimmy Jones, a puny, pale-faced child of eight, permanently lamed by hip disease, which made one leg shorter than the other, was hanging on the rickety gate, as usual, and seemed to be waiting Ben’s appearance, hobbling out to meet him when he came along the road.

      “You’re awful late,” cried the lame lad, in a thin, high-pitched voice, which attested his affliction and weakness. “I’ve been watchin’. I saw lots of other fellers go by, but then I waited an’ waited, an’ you didn’t come.”

      A lump rose in Ben’s throat, and into his chilled heart crept a faint glow. Here was some one who took an interest in him, some one who did not regard him with aversion and scorn, even though it was only a poor little cripple.

      Jimmy Jones had reminded Ben of his own blind brother, Jerry, which had led him to seek to make friends with the lame boy, and to talk with him in a manner that quickly won the confidence of the child. This was his reward; in this time when his heart was sore and heavy with the belief that he was detested of all the world, Jimmy watched and waited for him at the gate, and came limping toward him with a cheery greeting.

      Ben stooped and caught up the tiny chap, who was pitifully light, swinging him to a comfortable position on his bent left arm.

      “So you were watching for me, were you, Jimmy?” he said, in a wonderfully soft voice for him. “That was fine of you, and I won’t forget it.”

      “Yep, I waited. What made you so late? I wanted to tell you, I set that box-trap you fixed for me so it would work, an’ what do you think I ketched? Bet you can’t guess.”

      “A squirrel,” hazarded Ben.

      “Nope, a cat!” laughed the little fellow, and Ben whistled in pretended great surprise. “But I let her go. We don’t want no cats; we got enough now. But that jest shows the trap will work all right now, an’ I’ll have a squirrel next, I bet y’u.”

      “Sure you will,” agreed Ben, as he passed through the gate and caught a glimpse of the buxom widow, who, hearing voices, had hastened from the kitchen to peer out. “You’ll be a great trapper, Jimmy; not a doubt of it.”

      “Say, if I ketch a squirrel, will you help me make a cage for him?” asked Jimmy eagerly.

      “I don’t know,” answered Ben soberly. “If I can, I will; but – ”

      “Course you ken! Didn’t you fix the trap? I expect you know how to make ev’ry kind of thing like that.”

      “If I have a chance to make it, I will,” promised Ben, as he gently placed the boy on the steps and forced to his face a smile that robbed it in a remarkable way of its uncomeliness.

      “I don’t s’pose we ken begin now?”

      “It’s too late to-night, and I’m in a hurry. We’ll have to put it off, Jimmy.”

      The smile vanished from his face the moment he passed round the corner of the house on his way to the back

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