pared to make a
man of him at the cost of his possible love? This faced her when she
was alone with her passionate nature, and she fought it, and with her
fists clenched she cried: "Yes, yes, yes!"

Do we know all that Grizel had to fight? There were times when Tommy's
mind wandered to excuses for himself; he knew what men were, and he
shuddered to think of the might have been, had a girl who could love
as Grizel did loved such a man as her father. He thanked his Maker,
did Tommy, that he, who was made as those other men, had avoided
raising passions in her. I wonder how he was so sure. Do we know all
that Grizel had to fight?

* * * * *

They spoke much during those days of the coming parting, and she
always said that she could bear it if she saw him go away more of a
man than he had come.

"Then anything I have suffered or may suffer," she told him, "will
have been done to help you, and perhaps in time that will make me
proud of my poor little love-story. It would be rather pitiful, would
it not, if I have gone through so much for no end at all?"

She spoke, he said, almost reproachfully, as if she thought he might
go away on his wings, after all.

"We can't be sure," she murmured, she was so eager to make him
watchful.

"Yes," he said, humbly but firmly, "I may be a scoundrel, Grizel, I am
a scoundrel, but one thing you may be sure of, I am done with
sentiment." But even as he said it, even as he felt that he could tear
himself asunder for being untrue to Grizel, a bird was singing at his
heart because he was free again, free to go out into the world and
play as if it were but a larger den. Ah, if only Tommy could always
have remained a boy!

Elspeth's marriage day came round, and I should like to linger in it,
and show you Elspeth in her wedding-gown, and Tommy standing behind to
catch her if she fainted, and Ailie weeping, and Aaron Latta rubbing
his gleeful hands, and a smiling bridesmaid who had once thought she
might be a bride. But that was a day in Elspeth's story, not in
Tommy's and Grizel's. Only one incident in their story crept into that
happy day. There were speeches at the feast, and the Rev. Mr. Dishart
referred to Tommy in the kindliest way, called him "my young friend,"
quoted (inaccurately) from his book, and expressed an opinion, formed,
he might say, when Mr. Sandys was a lad at school (cheers), that he
had a career before him. Tommy bore it well, all excep