He was soft.

He was only half a man.

How long would he last?
How long before he would have to cry quits, like a whipped boy?
How long before his legs would crumple up under him, and his lungs give out?
How long before Father Roland, hiding his contempt, would have to send him back?
A sense of shame--shame and anger--swept through him, heating his brain, setting his teeth hard, filling him again with a grim determination.

For the second time that day his fighting blood rose.

It surged through his veins in a flood, beating down the old barriers, clearing away the obstructions of his doubts and his fears, and filling him with the _desire_ to go on--the desire to fight it out, to punish himself as he deserved to be punished, and to win in the end.