d the
judge against him, Mrs. Malcolm, and now my warning has come home.
Yesterday's deplorable incident has been forgotten by me; I have
blotted it from my memory because I realized that you were in spirit
struck down as I was, though not so publicly. I have forgiven James.
Since he has come to me sober and penitent, and confessed where he got
the liquor, I have passed his part in the affair by with a kindly
warning. But I cannot pass by the real culprit, the man who struck at
me through the weak James, and almost felled me before the town, the
man who furnished James with the sources of his intoxication. His
punishment I leave to you." Mr. Pound drove his fork into an asparagus
stalk to show that he had said all that could be said and all that he
would say. That he had said enough to bring others to his way of
thinking was evident from the gravity with which my father shook his
head.

"David, when I questioned you as to yesterday's unfortunate occurrence
you confessed that this man Blight gave James the liquor."

"No, sir," I returned quickly. "I didn't say that."

"How was it, then?" my father asked.

I had pleaded with my mother to allow me to be one of this great
dinner-party, that I might partake, first-hand, of the good things
which I had seen preparing. I was to enjoy the feast in a silence
proper to my years. So I had promised. And now one of those dangerous
questions which rise like a rocket from a boy's lips had transformed me
from a small guest whose part was to sit silently in the shadow of the
mighty clergyman, and there only to even up the side of the table, into
a person of unpleasant importance. Had my father rapped for order,
risen, and announced that we had the good fortune to have with us
Master David Malcolm, who would tell us where James found the source of
his intoxication, he could not have made me more dreadfully
conspicuous. I wanted to run, but, if nothing else, my father's eyes
would have held me. I wanted, above all, to keep silent because I
loved James, who from the day when I had first toddled out of the house
into the broad world of hay and wheat fields had been almost my sole
playfellow. As yet I did not know what a bumptious Malcolm was; I did
not understand the man who always said what he did not mean; I
remembered him only as the kindly host who had found me dripping and
cold and had made me gloriously warm. And more than that, I remembered
the little girl who had d