hing passionately that he too had "done and dared"--that he had not
crouched there among the trees, afraid and trembling. A small inner
voice, that spoke to him very sharply after such occasions, told him
contemptuously, that he had been more afraid than a girl; that he had
been a coward; and as soon as he reached their small lamp-lit home, he
ran away from silent Betty and the babbling baby, to his own bedroom, to
cry in loneliness over this second self who had done the wrong.

And Betty stole silently into her bedroom. The dining room door was
still closed, and those quiet elder ones were having their "pleasant"
evening. She undressed the baby, and kissed her over and over, then put
her into her little cot and gave her a dimpled thumb to suck. And she
herself cuddled up very close to her, and began to cry too. So much for
all her show of bravery now.

And a small voice spoke to her also, and showed her the seamy side of
this great deed of hers. Told her that no one else in all the world
would have dreamed of doing so wrong a thing; pointed out her mother and
father and pretty Dot, Mrs. and Mr. Sharman as examples of great
goodness. When the baby was placidly sleeping, she sat upright on the
end of her mother's bed in her earnestness to "see" if any of those
righteous five would be guilty of the wickedness of becoming ghosts to
frighten an old man. She would have felt easier at once if she could
have convinced herself that they would; but she could only see each of
them rounding eyes of horror at her, and her sobs, broke out afresh.

The door opened and Cyril came into the darkness, whispering and
whimpering,--

"I didn't play fair, Betty," he said--"I wish I'd played fair--I----"

"Oh," said Betty sobbingly--"Oh, Cyril, you're ever so much nobler than
I am. You wouldn't frighten an old man, neither. Oh, I wish I was as
good as you!"

Whereat a sweet sense of well-doing stole over Cyril. "Never mind," he
said cheerfully, "do as I do another time."

"There won't be another time," said Betty. "I'm going to turn over a new
leaf, and be as good as if I was grown up."

CHAPTER V

JOHN BROWN

John Brown's life had hitherto been a curiously rough and tumble sort of
existence. There had been a season, brief and entirely unremembered by
him, when his home had been in one of Sydney's most fashionable suburbs;
when a tender-eyed mother had watched delightedly over his first gleams
of intelligence, and a proud