wift as I was able ... but a flock of fists
drove in over me ... and I was thrown prone across the form of the old
man ... who stuttered with fright and impotent rage, swearing it was all
a put-up game between us to torment him further, when I protested that I
had not tried to do it.

* * * * *

The next morning Spalton sent for me.

"Look here, Razorre, if _you_ were not the biggest freak of them all, I
could understand," he remarked severely....

I tried to explain how sorry I was for the way I had joined in Pfeiler's
persecution ... but the master would have none of it ... he told me to
look better to my conduct or he would have to expel me from the
community....

"Gregory," he ended, calling me by my name, "somehow I never quite _get
you_ ... most of the time you are refined and almost over-gentle ... you
know and love poetry and art and the worthwhile things ... but then
there's also the hoodlum in you ... the dirty Hooligan--" his eyes
blazed with just rebuke.... I trod out silently, sick of myself, at
heart ... as I have often, often been.

* * * * *

After that, Pfeiler avoided me. I went up to him in apology. Most
contritely I said I was sorry.

"You are a fraud," he cried at me, spluttering, almost gnashing his
teeth in fury, "you go around here, pretending you are a poet, and have
the soul of a thug, a brute, a coward and bully ... please don't speak
to me any more as long as I'm here ... you only pretend interest in
spiritual and intellectual things, always for some brutal reason ...
even now you are planning something base, some diabolical betrayal of
the Master, perhaps, or of all of us.... I myself have advised Mr.
Spalton, for the good of his community to send you back to the tramps
and jail-birds from whom you come ... you scum! you filthy pestilence!"

His head was shaking like an oscillating toy ... his eyes were starting
from his head through force of his invective ... he was jerking about,
in his anger, like a dancing mouse....

I hurried out of his word-range, overwhelmed with greater shame than I
can ever say.

* * * * *

The editor of the _Independent_, Dr. William Hayes Ward, had, so far,
not found room in his magazine for the two poems of mine he had bought.
I was chagrined, and wrote him, rather impetuously, that, if he didn't
care for the poems he might return them. Which he did, with a