"Aiya!" It was their word for rotten, no good, spoiled, disappointing, crippled or diseased, for a misformed child or an old man or woman arrived at helplessness.

Such, I had learned from Guarin, they almost invariably killed.

It was why, from the first, we hardly saw dwarfed or humped or crippled among them.
We had to cross a torrent upon a tree that falling had made from side to side a rounded bridge.

Again that old hurt betrayed him.

He slipped, would have fallen into the torrent below, but that I, turning, caught him and the Indian behind us helped.