id the voice, "an'
hereafter mind your tongue, or you shall ride a rail in tar and
feathers."

They could see the crowd scatter, and some passed near them,
running away in the darkness.

"Stoop there an' say not a word," the tinker whispered, crouching
in the grass.

When all were out of hearing, they started for the little shop.

"Hereafter," said Darrel, as they walked along, "God send he be
more careful with the happiness of other men. I do assure thee,
boy, it is bitter, bitter, bitter."

XXVIII

Darrel at Robin's Inn

Trove had much to help him,--youth, a cheerful temperament, a
counsellor of unfailing wisdom. Long after they were gone he
recalled the sadness and worry of those days with satisfaction,
for, thereafter, the shock of trouble was never able to surprise
and overthrow him.

After due examination he had been kept in bail to wait the action
of the grand jury, soon to meet. Now there were none thought him
guilty--save one or two afflicted with the evil tongue. It seemed
to him a dead issue and gave him no worry. One thing, however,
preyed upon his peace,--the knowledge that his father was a thief.
A conviction was ever boring in upon him that he had no right to
love Polly. A base injustice it would be, he thought, to marry her
without telling what he had no right to tell. But he was ever
hoping for some word of his father--news that might set him free.
He had planned to visit Polly, and on a certain day Darrel was to
meet him at Robin's Inn. The young man waited, in some doubt of
his duty, and that day came--one of the late summer--when he and
Darrel went afoot to the Inn, crossing hill and valley, as the crow
flies, stopping here and there at isles of shadow in a hot amber
sea of light. They sat long to hear the droning in the stubble and
let their thought drift slowly as the ship becalmed.

"Some days," said Darrel, "the soul in me is like a toy skiff,
tossing in the ripples of a duck pond an' mayhap stranding on a
reed or lily. An' then," he added, with kindling eye and voice,
"she is a great ship, her sails league long an' high, her masthead
raking the stars, her hull in the infinite sea."

"Well," said Trove, sighing, "I'm still in the ripples of the duck
pond."

"An' see they do not swamp thee," said Darrel, with a smile that
seemed to say, "Poor weakling, your trouble is only as the ripples
of a tiny pool." They went on slowly, over green pastures, halting
at a bro