CHAPTER II.
THE PARIAH

The other boy saw him and halted, staring at him, astonishment and incredulity on his face. In that moment he was speechless with the surprise of this meeting.

Ben returned the look, but there was in his eyes the expression sometimes seen in those of a hunted animal.

The boys at a distance continued kicking the football about and pursuing it, but those nearer paused and watched the two lads, seeming to realize in a moment that something was wrong.

It was Roger Eliot who broke the silence. “What’s the matter, Hayden?” he asked. “Do you know Stone?”

The parted lips of Bernard Hayden were suddenly closed and curved in a sneer. When they parted again, a short, unpleasant laugh came from them.

“Do I know him!” he exclaimed, with the utmost disdain. “I should say I do! What’s he doing here?”

“He’s attending the academy. He looks to me like he might have good stuff in him, so I asked him out for practice.”

“Good stuff!” cried Hayden scornfully. “Good stuff in that fellow? Well, it’s plain that you don’t know him, Eliot!”

The boys drew nearer and gathered about, eager to hear what was to follow, seeing immediately that something unusual was transpiring.

Not a word came from Ben Stone’s lips, but the sickly pallor still clung to his uncomely face, and in his bosom his heart lay like a leaden weight. He had heard the boys in the gymnasium talking of “Bern,” but not for an instant had he fancied they were speaking of Bernard Hayden, his bitterest enemy, whom he felt had brought on him the great trouble and disgrace of his life.

He had come from the gymnasium and onto the football field feeling his heart exulting with a new-found pleasure in life; and now this boy, whom he had believed so far away, whom he had hoped never again to see, rose before him to push aside the happiness almost within his grasp. The shock of it had robbed him of his self-assertion and reliance, and he felt himself cowering weakly, with an overpowering dread upon him.

Roger Eliot was disturbed, and his curiosity was aroused. The other boys were curious, too, and they pressed still nearer, that they might not miss a word. It was Eliot who asked:

“How do you happen to know him, Hayden?”

“He lived in Farmington, where I came from when we moved here – before he ran away,” was the answer.

“Before he ran away?” echoed Roger.

“Yes; to escape being sent to the reformatory.”

Some of the boys muttered, “Oh!” and “Ah!” and one of them said, “He looks it!” Those close to Stone drew off a bit, as if there was contamination in the air. Immediately they regarded him with disdain and aversion, and he looked in vain for one sympathetic face. Even Roger Eliot’s grave features had hardened, and he made no effort to conceal his displeasure.

Sudden rage and desperation seemed to swell Ben’s heart to the point of bursting. The pallor left his face; it flushed, and from crimson it turned to purple. He felt a fearful desire to leap upon his enemy, throttle him, strike him down, trample out his life, and silence him forever. His eyes glared, and the expression on his face was so terrible that one or two of the boys muttered their alarm and drew off yet farther.

“He’s going to fight!” whispered Spotty Davis, the words coming with a whistling sound through his missing teeth.

Ben heard this, and immediately another change came upon him. His hands, which had been clenched and half-lifted, opened and fell at his sides. He bowed his head, and his air was that of utter dejection and hopelessness.

Bern Hayden observed every change, and now he laughed shortly, cuttingly. “You see, he doesn’t deny it, Eliot,” he said. “He can’t deny it. If he did, I could produce proof. You’d need only to ask my father.”

“I’m sorry to hear this,” said the captain of the eleven, although to Ben it seemed there was no regret in his voice. “Of course we don’t want such a fellow on the team.”

“I should say not! If you took him, you couldn’t keep me. I wouldn’t play on the same team with the son of a jail-bird.”

“What’s that?” cried Roger. “Do you mean to say his father – ”

“Why, you’ve all heard of old Abner Stone, who was sent to prison for counterfeiting, and who was shot while trying to escape.”

“Was that his father?”

“That was his father. Oh, he comes of a fine family! And he has the gall to come here among decent fellows – to try to attend the academy here! Wait till my father hears of this! He’ll have something to say about it. Father was going to send him to the reformatory once, and he may do it yet.”

Roger’s mind seemed made up now. “You know where my locker is, Stone,” he said. “You can leave there the stuff I loaned you.”

For a moment it seemed that the accused boy was about to speak. He lifted his head once more and looked around, but the disdainful and repellant faces he saw about him checked the words, and he turned despairingly away. As he walked slowly toward the gate, he heard the hateful voice of Bern Hayden saying:

“Better watch him, Eliot; he may steal those things.”

The world had been bright and beautiful and flooded with sunshine a short time before; now it was dark and cold and gloomy, and the sun was sunk behind a heavy cloud. Even the trees outside the gate seemed to shrink from him, and the wind came and whispered his shame amid the leaves. Like one in a trance, he stumbled into the deserted gymnasium and sat alone and wretched on Roger Eliot’s locker, fumbling numbly at the knotted shoestrings.

“It’s all over!” he whispered to himself. “There is no chance for me! I’ll have to give up!”

After this he sat quite still, staring straight ahead before him with eyes that saw nothing. Full five minutes he spent in this manner. The sound 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.