Plunged
into despair he plodded along the streets, till at length, out of his
stupefaction, came the question--what would Amanda say?

With that an overwhelming truth awakened him. He was free. He might
have killed a man, but he certainly had killed his habit. He felt the
thing dead within him. Wildly he gazed around to see where he was, and
thought it a deed of fate that he had unconsciously traveled toward
the home of his love. For there before his eyes was Amanda's cottage
with the red geranium in her window. He ran to the window and tapped
mysteriously and peered within. Then he ran to the door and knocked.
It opened with a vigorous swing.

"Mr. Pepper, what do you mean--tapping on my window in such
clandestine manner, and in broad daylight, too?" demanded Miss Hill
with a stern voice none of her scholars had ever heard.

"Amanda, dear, I am a murderer!" cried Pepper, in tones of
unmistakable joy. "I am a murderer, but I'll never do _it_ again."

"Laws!" exclaimed Miss Hill

He pushed her aside and closed the door, and got possession of her
hands, all the time pouring out incoherent speech, in which only _it_
was distinguishable.

"Man alive! Are you crazy?" asked Miss Hill, getting away from him
into a corner. But it happened to be a corner with a couch, and when
her trembling legs touched it she sat down.

"Never, never again will I do it!" cried the Colonel, with a grand
gesture.

"Can you talk sense?" faltered the schoolmistress.

Colonel Pepper flung himself down beside her, and with many breathless
stops and repetitions and eloquent glances and applications of his
bandana to his heated face, he finally got his tragic story told.

"Is that all?" inquired Miss Hill, with a touch of sarcasm. "Why,
you're not a murderer, even if the man drowns, which isn't at all
likely. You've only fallen again."

"Fallen. But I never fell so terribly. This was the worst."

"Stuff! Where's the chivalry you tried to make me think you were full
of? Didn't you humiliate me, a poor helpless woman? Wasn't that worse?
Didn't you humiliate me before a crowd of people in a candy-store?
Could anything be more monstrous? You did _it_, you remember?"

"Amanda! Never! Never!" gasped the Colonel.

"You did, and I let you think I believed your lies."

"Amanda! I'll never do it again, never to any one, so long as I live.
It's dead, same as the card tricks. Forgive me, Amanda, and marry me.
I'm so fond of you, and I'm so lone