essly, with the brown mud
dripping off them, and her little white feet, for her shoes and stockings
had come off in the mud, and her dead-white face, brought tears to many an
eye there, and Paul himself turned over on the grass and wept bitterly,
without shame, before them all.

"Better let him have his cry out," said the gentleman who had thrown the
lasso, and who proved to be a doctor; "it will relieve him and do him
good. Now, you men, some of you carry him carefully home, he is not fit
to walk; and I will carry her, if you will allow me," he said, stooping
over Stella. "I think they had better be got to bed as quickly as
possible. And you, can you walk, do you think?" he added, kindly, to Mrs.
Anketell. She nodded in reply; she was too much agitated to speak.
"Take my arm, please, if it would be any support to you." His quick eye
noted the strain she was enduring, and he quietly did all he could to
cheer and distract her thoughts from the contemplation of the awful
tragedy which might have befallen two of her children.

So the sad little procession wended its way across the sunny moor again,
and Paul, all the way, was saying over and over again to himself he would
never, never again try to do what he had been told not to. He would be
good, obedient, and humble, he would take care of Stella, and his mother,
and Mike. And that night when his mother came to see him the last thing
before going to bed herself, he told her the whole story from beginning to
end. "Stella is awfully plucky, for a girl," he added at the conclusion
of his tale. "She was afraid for me to try to cross, but she didn't seem
frightened when she was being sucked down by the mud, she never screamed
at all."

"Stella has far more courage than you think," said his mother gravely,
"and I hope you will never again jibe at the cowardice of girls; it only
shows that you do not know what real courage is. Good muscles do not
always mean true courage. You must learn that it is often far more brave
to stand by and not do a thing, knowing all the time you will be called a
coward for it, than it is to be daring and defiant, as you were to-day.
Obedience in all things, pleasant or unpleasant, is true courage, and that
is what you lacked to-day, and so brought misery and pain to many, none of
whom you consider as wise or brave as yourself."

Paul certainly felt the greatest shame as he realised how foolish he must
seem in the eyes of everybody, and