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of the “nondescripts” touted by Phineas Barnum: Looks like a boy, acts like a monkey! “Come on, hunchback,” said the ringleader, who I had heard the other boys call Duff. “Show us your spastic walk.” He gave me a shove; when I fell to my hands and knees, he booted me in the rump. “Get up, little man!”
    Before I could respond, I heard a new, less raucous voice say, “Duff! Let him be, all right?”

T HE INTERLOPER WAS NOT ONE OF OUR keepers—or “instructors,” as they preferred to be called; it was only Ezra. “Oh, Runaway,” said Duff wearily, as though they had been through this before, many times. “Why don’t you just run away, before you get hurt?”
    â€œWhy don’t you just let him be?” said Ezra.
    â€œWe’re making him feel welcome. You wouldn’t want us to ignore him, would you?”
    â€œI don’t believe he’d mind, would you, Rufus?”
    â€œNo,” I said.
    â€œShut up, Goofus.” Duff thrust his scowling face, which was showing signs of a beard, up close to Ezra’s. “Since you like to escape so much, I’ll give you a chance. Get out of here now, and you’ll escape having your stupid knob knocked off.”
    â€œI can take it,” said Ezra, then nodded toward me. “He can’t. So why don’t you—” He broke off as Duff raised a fist and clubbed him alongside the head. I expected Ezra to go down, but he only staggered a little, shook his head, and drove a fist into the bigger boy’s gut. Duff doubled over, gasping for breath. I don’t know whether or not Ezra would have finished him off, for the other three boys fell upon him, then, flailing at him with fists and feet.
    Eventually one of the keepers came to break up the fight—if something so one-sided can be called a fight—and help Ezra to the infirmary. As the Quaker nurse tended to his cuts and abrasions, I sat by the bed and watched; it seemed to be all I was good for. Although, while Ezra was being beaten up by the big boys, I hadn’t just knelt there in the dirt and watched. I’d closed my eyes.
    When the nurse departed, I said, “Why did you do that?”
    Ezra’s lower lip was so swollen that the words came out sounding strange and slurred. “I couldn’t stand to see them knock you around, that’s all.”
    â€œSo instead, they knocked you around.”
    â€œLike I said, I can take it. You can’t.”
    â€œThey never would have beaten me up the way they did you.”
    â€œOh, so you’d have had me just stay out of it?”
    â€œYes.”
    He glared at me for a moment, then laughed and shook his head; the movement made him wince. “I know you try to accept things with good grace, Rufus, but I reckon you’re going a bit far. It don’t mean you have to just give up. Sometimes you got to fight back.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œ Why ? Because you can’t let a blunderbuss like Duff just walk all over you, that’s why!”
    â€œYou fought back, and he walked all over you anyway.”
    Ezra stared at me, as if this were the stupidest thing he’d ever heard—or as if he’d just never thought about it before. He shook his head again and gazed up at the soot-stained ceiling. “I got to get out of this place.”
    â€œNow?”
    â€œNo, you ninny. But soon. Duff already had it in for me; now he’ll really be out for my blood. I got to think up a better escape plan.” He carefully turned his face to me. “You can come with me.” When I looked down at the floor, he said, “Oh, sorry; I forgot. You’d rather just stay here and take it all with good grace.”
    By the time Ezra was released from the infirmary, he had a new escape strategy. “’Tis foolproof,” he whispered to me at supper. “You see, I hide next to one of the workshops till dark. When