it cannot be denied the iron is inconvenient, and the ulcer hurts."

"Ah!" cried his uncle, "do not envy the heathen! Theirs is a sad
lot! Ah, poor souls, if they but knew the joys of being fettered!
Poor souls, my heart yearns for them. But the truth is they are
vile, odious, insolent, ill-conditioned, stinking brutes, not truly
human - for what is a man without a fetter? - and you cannot be too
particular not to touch or speak with them."

After this talk, the child would never pass one of the unfettered
on the road but what he spat at him and called him names, which was
the practice of the children in that part.

It chanced one day, when he was fifteen, he went into the woods,
and the ulcer pained him. It was a fair day, with a blue sky; all
the birds were singing; but Jack nursed his foot. Presently,
another song began; it sounded like the singing of a person, only
far more gay; at the same time there was a beating on the earth.
Jack put aside the leaves; and there was a lad of his own village,
leaping, and dancing and singing to himself in a green dell; and on
the grass beside him lay the dancer's iron.

"Oh!" cried Jack, "you have your fetter off!"

"For God's sake, don't tell your uncle!" cried the lad.

"If you fear my uncle," returned Jack "why do you not fear the
thunderbolt"?

"That is only an old wives' tale," said the other. "It is only