Then everybody would know—the boys down below, Matty, Dad—Dad had never actually said it, but it had always been there, as long as Scotty could remember. He had tried and tried to make up for his small size, for his skinny legs and bony chest.

It hadn't been his fault that Dad was such a big man, such a rugged, powerful man. Those long hunting trips up through Canada—a man had to share the load, there was no place for weakness and weariness there. And Dad had taken him along, once, until he had tired, and turned his ankle on a short portage. They had carried him out—and he knew that he had lost his Dad that day. Dad hadn't admitted it, but it was true. There was always the half-hidden disgust and sadness and disappointment in his cool, grey eyes—

"Minus two, Scotty. Final check—"

His hand flicked out automatically, as fear and dismay welled up in his mind. Everything he had ever done he had flubbed, somehow—he searched frantically through his mind for one small, pure act of absolute bravery, unadorned by words, unaltered by empty rationalizations and built-up courage, and his mind yielded nothing but hoarse, heavy laughter. Somewhere there was a key. It had started somewhere, if only he could remember. Somewhere beneath the years of futile failure, there was a core—

"Sixty seconds, Scotty—Good luck, boy!"

He froze, his hands clutching the safety belt in a grip of iron as the words pounded in his ear: "—forty—thirty five—thirty—twenty five—"

And then, like a great door opening up in his mind, he remembered—

A day so long ago, so deeply buried that it had not come to mind in years. A day when he had been walking down a village street, on the way to the store for his mother, a small boy, hardly ten—

A group of boys, appearing suddenly from the old garage he was passing. A thin-faced lad, tall and sharp-boned, with cold eyes and a sneer on his thin lips. Other boys, too, mostly bigger than he. His eyes widened, and he started to back away when Thin-face grabbed his collar, pulled him up sharp. "Where you think you goin', bud?"

"Just down the street—"

"Who said you could walk on this street?"

"It's not your street. I can walk where I want—"

A gleam of cruelty in Thin-face's eyes. "Sissy thinks he's 

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