to return to his old lazy life with his father in the shack by the river.
People got off steamboats at the town and took the train to other towns
lying back from the river. He earned a little money by carrying trunks
filled with clothes or traveling men's samples up an incline from the
steamboat landing to the railroad station. Even at fourteen the strength in
his long gaunt body was so great that he could out-lift any man in town,
and he put one of the trunks on his shoulder and walked slowly and stolidly
away with it as a farm horse might have walked along a country road with a
boy of six perched on his back.

The money earned in this way Hugh for a time gave to his father, and when
the man had become stupid with drink he grew quarrelsome and demanded that
the boy return to live with him. Hugh had not the spirit to refuse and
sometimes did not want to refuse. When neither the station master nor his
wife was about he slipped away and went with his father to sit for a half
day with his back against the wall of the fishing shack, his soul at peace.
In the sunlight he sat and stretched forth his long legs. His small sleepy
eyes stared out over the river. A delicious feeling crept over him and for
the moment he thought of himself as completely happy and made up his mind
that he did not want to return again to the railroad station and to the
woman who was so determined to arouse him and make of him a man of her own
people.

Hugh looked at his father asleep and snoring in the long grass on the
river bank. An odd feeling of disloyalty crept over him and he became
uncomfortable. The man's mouth was open and he snored lustily. From his
greasy and threadbare clothing arose the smell of fish. Flies gathered
in swarms and alighted on his face. Disgust took possession of Hugh. A
flickering but ever recurring light came into his eyes. With all the
strength of his awakening soul he struggled against the desire to give way