“Invitations to accept public dinners as a compliment to himself have received from him this kind of reply: 

     “’A proper attention to the duties, on the discharge of which you
     so kindly desire to compliment me requires that I should decline
     your invitation.’”

All this was new to me, although much more was said touching his love for simple folk regarding which I needed no instruction.  Altogether, it helped me to feel the deep foundations on which my friend, the Senator, had been building in his public life.

Going out with the crowd that evening, I met Sally and Mr. and Mrs. Dunkelberg.  The latter did not speak to me and when I asked Sally if I could walk home with her she answered curtly, “No, thank you.”

In following the schoolmaster I have got a bit ahead of my history.  Soon after the opening of the new year—­ten days or so later it may have been—­I had begun to feel myself encompassed by a new and subtle force.  It was a thing as intangible as heat but as real as fire and more terrible, it seemed to me.  I felt it first in the attitude of my play fellows.  They denied me the confidence and intimacy which I had enjoyed before.  They whispered together in my presence.  In all this I had not failed to observe that Henry Wills had taken a leading part.  The invisible, inaudible, mysterious thing wrought a great change in me.  It followed me through the day and lay down with me at night.  I wondered what I had done.  I carefully surveyed my clothes.  They looked all right to me.  My character was certainly no worse than it had been.  How it preyed upon my peace and rest and happiness—­that mysterious hidden thing!

One day Uncle Peabody came down to see me and I walked through the village with him.  We met Mr. Dunkelberg, who merely nodded and hurried along.  Mr. Bridges, the merchant, did not greet him warmly and chat with him as he had been wont to do.  I saw that The Thing—­as I had come to think of it—­was following him also.  How it darkened his face!  Even now I can feel the aching of the deep, bloodless wounds of that day.  I could bear it better alone.  We were trying to hide our pain from each other when we said good-by.  How quickly my uncle turned away and walked toward the sheds!  He came rarely to the village of Canton after that.

I was going home at noon one day and while passing a crowd of boys I was shoved rudely into the fence.  Turning, I saw Henry Wills and my fist flashed to his face.  He fell backward and rising called me a thief and the son of a thief.  He had not finished the words when I was upon him.  The others formed a ring around us and we began a savage battle.  One of Wills’ friends tried to trip me.  In the midst of it I saw the schoolmaster just outside the ring.  He seized a boy by the collar.

“There’ll be no more interference,” said he.  “It’s goin’ to be a fair fight.”

I had felt another unfriendly foot but had not seen its owner.  We fought up and down, with lips and noses bleeding.  At last the time had come when I was quicker and stronger than he.  Soon Henry Wills lay on the ground before me with no disposition to go on with the fight.  I helped him up and he turned away from me.  Some of the boys began to jeer him.