l I tell your folks to-night?"

Wollaston was not in Maria's classes. He was older, and had entered
in advance. She had not a chance to reply until noon. Going into the
restaurant, she in her turn slipped a paper forcibly into his hand.

"Good land! look out!" said Maud Page. "Why, Maria Edgham, you butted
right into Wollaston Lee and nearly knocked him over."

What Maria had written was also short, but desperate. She wrote:

"If you ever tell your folks or my folks, or anybody, I will drown
myself in Fisher's Pond."

A look of relief spread over the boy's face. Maria glanced at him
where he sat at a distant table with some boys, and he gave an almost
imperceptible nod of reassurance at her. Maria understood that he had
not told, and would not, unless she bade him.

On the train going home that night he found a chance to speak to her.
He occupied the seat behind her, and waited until a woman who sat
with Maria got off the train at a station, and also a man who had
occupied the seat with him. Then he leaned over and said,
ostentatiously, so he could be heard half the length of the car, "It
is a beautiful day, isn't it?"

Maria did not turn around at all, but her face was deadly white as
she replied, "Yes, lovely."

Then the boy whispered, and the whisper seemed to reach her inmost
soul. "Look here, I want to do what is right, and--honorable, you
know, but hang me if I know what is. It is an awful pickle."

Maria nodded, still with her face straight ahead.

"I don't know how it happened, for my part," the boy whispered.

Maria nodded again.

"I didn't say anything to my folks, because I didn't know how you
would feel about it. I thought I ought to ask you first. But I am not
afraid to tell, you needn't think that, and I mean to be honorable.
If you say so, I will go right home with you and tell your folks, and
then I will tell mine, and we will see what we can do."

Maria made no answer. She was in agony. It seemed to her that the
whisper was deafening her.

"I will leave school, and go to work right away," said the boy, and
his voice was a little louder, and full of pathetic manliness; "and I
guess in a year's time I could get so I could earn enough to support
you. I mean to do what is right. All is I want to do what you want me
to do. I didn't know how you felt about it."

Then Maria turned slightly. He leaned closer.

"I told you how I felt," she whispered back.

"You mean what you wrote?"

"Yes,