10
T
he
next two years in that large Eastern city of the United States were the most lonesome of Tregan’s life. The man battled silently with the boy. Because Tregan was the son of his father he fought back as stubbornly. There was never any open avowal of hostilities, only the long warfare of underground mining and sapping. The father had the advantage of parental authority, the boy the greater energy and resourcefulness of the child.
Tregan fought his father silently, and fought the strange world that he was in—a world of invigorating freshness that he wanted to accept him. But people smiled when they heard him talk and so he learned not to speak. Later he knew that his accent had amused and pleased them; but in the first warped bitterness he knew only that they laughed. So he set hi
