et us walk faster," she said. "It is away past midnight. I do believe
it's nearly day. Can you see your watch?"

"Yes, but I can't see the time."

"Nobody can see time, Mr. Teacher of Children."

"But I could not tell the time even if I were to hold the lantern to the
watch."

"Oh, of course you could. Why do you talk that way?"

"I am moved to talk that way because I know that the watch, being in
sympathy with me, refuses to record time when I am with you--it
frightens off the minutes in an ecstasy."

"Nonsense, Mr. Hawes. I do believe daylight is coming. What a night we
have passed, and here I am unable to realize it, and mother is
heart-broken over our disgrace. But I suppose it will fall upon me and
crush me when we have gone away. My brother sentenced to the
penitentiary! To myself I have repeated these words over and over and
yet they don't strike me."

"Perhaps it is because your mind is on some one else," I replied, with a
return of my feeling of bitterness.

With a pressure gentle and yet forgetful her hand had been resting on my
arm, but in an instant the pressure was gone like a bird fluttering from
a bough, and out in the road she was walking alone.

"I earnestly beg your pardon. I scarcely knew what I was saying. Won't
you please take my arm?"

"To be compelled to drop it again before we have gone a hundred yards?"

"No, to drop it when we have reached the gate. Won't you, please? I
don't deny that I am a fool. I have always been a fool. My father said
so and he was right. Everybody made fun of me because I was so easily
cheated; and you ought to be willing to forgive a man who was born a
failure. Whenever there has been a mistake to be made I have made it.
Once I was caught in a storm and when I came in dripping, my father said
that I hadn't sense enough to come in out of the rain. But I am stronger
with every one else than I am with you, and----"

She was laughing at me; but it was a laugh of sympathy, of forgiveness,
and I caught her hand and placed it upon my arm. And so we walked along
in silence, she pressing my arm when the road was rough. Daylight was
coming and we could see the house, dark and lonesome beyond the black
ravine.

"What a peculiar man the General is," I said, feeling the growing
heaviness of the silence. "I can hardly place him; but I believe he has
a kind heart."

"Yes," she replied, "he is kind and brave and generous, but over it all
is a weakness."

"And he is o