The Hidden Children by Robert William Chambers Chapter 1 Page 22

The man’s smile was painful; he smiled because he thought we expected it; and I turned away disheartened, ashamed, burning with a fierce resentment against the fate that in three years had turned us into what we were — we Americans who had never known the lash — we who had never learned to fear a master.

Boyd said: “There is a gentleman, one Major Ebenezer Lockwood, hereabouts. Do you know him?”

“No, sir.”

“What? Why, that seems strange!”

The man’s face paled, and he remained silent for a few moments. Then, furtively, his eyes began for the hundredth time to note the details of our forest dress, stealing stealthily from the fringe on legging and hunting shirt