more glaring oddities, lest Walter might one day dismiss him too as a "freak."
For a year or two this comradeship was very close, being fostered by the fact that Walter, unlike Mark Laval, attended Paul's Sunday-school, which in a clannish community constituted an alliance. Then came a dark winter's day when Paul found Walter deep in the confidence of an enemy, John Ashmill, the son of Dave Ashmill who owned forests and gypsum mines, John Ashmill who had given Paul the nickname of "Polly" and always sang out, "Polly want a cracker?" when he hove into view. Walter was aware of the feud, and Paul was obliged to conclude that his chum was cultivating his enemy for the sake of the latter's liberal allowance and his superior sleds and skates.
It was a Saturday morning, a school holiday, and Paul had set off to find Walter, when he encountered him in company with his new playmate, a ribald despot with whom Paul supposed it was his duty to "mix," but on account of whose physical sense of humour he was carrying a scar on his temple, as well as more dire wounds that couldn't be seen. Paul greeted them without stopping, walking briskly towards nowhere. A solitary day lay before him, for Mark Laval had been taken off to the woods by his father, and Gritty was, after all, only half boy, and he had forsworn girls.
Then, at the corner, a malicious snowball burst upon his cap and penetrated freezingly into a corner of a stubborn young heart.
For six months after that he refused to speak to Walter Dreer, though they continued to meet in the street, and to sit in the same classroom. It was a bitterly unhappy winter and he suffered for the sake of a principle which he secretly felt to be distorted. He was flatting and discording. Instinct told him that an uncompromising attitude always failed to prove itself justified. Yet he was
