ssips who had a tale they could unfold--a
dreadful tale! Beginning with my forging my father's name to get money
to spend on Rachel Melrose and other Topeka girls, and to pay debts I
had contracted at Harvard, on and on the tale ran, till, by the time the
Fingal's Creek neighborhood got hold of the "real facts," it developed
that I had all but murdered a man who stood in the way of a rich fee my
father was to get out of a land suit somewhere; and lastly came an
ominous shaking of the head and a keeping back of the "worst truth,"
about my gay escapades with girls of shady reputation whom I had
deceived, and cruelly wronged, trusting to my standing as a rich man's
son to pull me through all right.

Marjie was the last one in Springvale to be told of my sudden
leave-taking. The day had been intolerably long for her, and the evening
brought an irresistible temptation to go up to our old playground.
Contrary to his daily habit my father had passed the Whately house on
his way home, and Marjie had seen him climb the hill. I was as like him
in form as Jean Pahusca was like Father Le Claire. Six feet and two
inches he stood, and so perfectly proportioned that he never looked
corpulent. I matched him in height and weight, but I had not his fine
bearing, for I had seen no military service then. I do not marvel that
Springvale was proud of him, for his character matched the graces Nature
had given him.

As Marjie watched him going the way I had so often taken, her resolve to
forget what we had been to each other suddenly fell to pieces. Her
feelings could not change at once. Mental habits are harder to break up
than physical appetites. For fourteen years my loved one had known me,
first as her stanch defender in our plays, then as her boy sweetheart
and lastly as her lover and betrothed husband. Could twenty-four hours
of distrust and misunderstanding displace these fourteen years of happy
thinking? And so after sunset Marjie went up the slope, hardly knowing
why she should do so or what she would say to me if she should meet me
there. It was a poor beginning for the new life she had carefully mapped
out, but impulse was stronger than resolve in her just then. Just at the
steep bend in the street she came face to face with Lettie Conlow. The
latter wore a grin of triumph as the two met.

"Good-evening, Marjie. I s'pose you've heard the news?"

"What news?" asked Marjie. "I haven't heard anything new to-day."

"Oh, yes, you ha