“He don’t have to!” Leonard threw up his head.  “I’m a good customer; he can like it or lump it, till the price of binding twine goes down!”

For the next few minutes the driver was occupied with trying to get up a long, rough hill on high gear.  Sometimes he could make that hill, and sometimes he couldn’t, and he was not able to account for the difference.  After he pulled the second lever with some disgust and let the car amble on as she would, he noticed that his companion was disconcerted.

“I’ll tell you what, Leonard,” Claude spoke in a strained voice, “I think the fair thing for you to do is to get out here by the road and give me a chance.”

Leonard swung his steering wheel savagely to pass a wagon on the down side of the hill.  “What the devil are you talking about, boy?”

“You think you’ve got our measure all right, but you ought to give me a chance first.”

Leonard looked down in amazement at his own big brown hands, lying on the wheel.  “You mortal fool kid, what would I be telling you all this for, if I didn’t know you were another breed of cats?  I never thought you got on too well with Bayliss yourself.”

“I don’t, but I won’t have you thinking you can slap the men in my family whenever you feel like it.”  Claude knew that his explanation sounded foolish, and his voice, in spite of all he could do, was weak and angry.

Young Leonard Dawson saw he had hurt the boy’s feelings.  “Lord, Claude, I know you’re a fighter.  Bayliss never was.  I went to school with him.”

The ride ended amicably, but Claude wouldn’t let Leonard take him home.  He jumped out of the car with a curt goodnight, and ran across the dusky fields toward the light that shone from the house on the hill.  At the little bridge over the creek, he stopped to get his breath and to be sure that he was outwardly composed before he went in to see his mother.

“Ran against a reaper in the dark!” he muttered aloud, clenching his fist.

Listening to the deep singing of the frogs, and to the distant barking of the dogs up at the house, he grew calmer.  Nevertheless, he wondered why it was that one had sometimes to feel responsible for the behaviour of people whose natures were wholly antipathetic to one’s own.

III

The circus was on Saturday.  The next morning Claude was standing at his dresser, shaving.  His beard was already strong, a shade darker than his hair and not so red as his skin.  His eyebrows and long lashes were a pale corn-colour—­made his blue eyes seem lighter than they were, and, he thought, gave a look of shyness and weakness to the upper part of his face.  He was exactly the sort of looking boy he didn’t want to be.  He especially hated his head,—­so big that he had trouble in buying his hats, and uncompromisingly square in shape; a perfect block-head.  His name was another source of humiliation.  Claude: