eart. I, who had not felt greatly the need of any
supernatural aid, but rather that I was able to manage my own affairs
with becoming discretion--of what saving power and grace could I speak to
one who was weak enough to fall, and for whom there was no help in
himself? In the dark school-room I involuntarily lifted my hands to my
face. When I heard the fisherman's voice again, he had come a step or two
nearer to me down the aisle.

"Let me tell you what I was thinking about when you came in," he said, in
an altered tone. "Rather, how I was allowing my imagination to run away
with itself, for my own particular delectation. I was imagining, when
you opened the door and stood revealed there in the light, how you might
come to me, indeed, as the angel of some better life and hope, offering
me a forgiveness as full as it was unmerited."

"It is not I who have to forgive you," I repeated.

"It is you, if any one," replied the fisherman, quickly. "I tell you, you
feel that girl Becky Weir's fault ten times more deeply than she feels it
for herself. You should never have come to this place. It was deucedly
odd and entertaining, but it was a step in the wrong direction. You put
yourself in the place of these people and translate all their possible
moods and tenses according to your own. It's a mistake. That girl, Becky,
would stare in perfect bewilderment if she could know of some of the
thoughts and emotions you doubtless attribute to her. She might even
laugh at you for your pains."

"I do not believe you," I said, not angrily nor resentfully, as might
have been earlier in our acquaintance, but with a painful, slow
positiveness. "Perhaps I was wrong in assuming the place I did in
Wallencamp, but it was not in the way you think. I don't know--I can't
see the way myself, clearly--always, but I believe that what you have
said is utterly false!"

"At least," continued the fisherman, in the old gay, frivolous tone,
which I heard now for the first time during this conversation; "I can
make her tenfold and abundant reparation--ah, you don't know--I say you
don't understand these people. It's a disagreeable subject; let it go!
But I'm very rich, you know," with an easy laugh, and the air of a man
only conscious, at last, of his good worldly fortune, and the exquisite
fit of his clothes. "Oh, I've got no end of money. After all, that's the
chief thing in this world. If a fellow's ordinarily clever and
good-natured, with a good rep