suffered enough to satisfy everybody."

"We needn't dwell upon my share in the matter, Tedham," I answered, as
kindly as I could. "That was entirely my own affair."

"You can't think," he pursued, "how much your letter was to me. It came
when I was in perfect despair--in those awful first days when it seemed
as if I could _not_ bear it, and yet death itself would be no relief.
Oh, they don't _know_ how much we suffer! If they did, they would
forgive us anything, everything! Your letter was the first gleam of hope
I had. I don't know how you came to write it!"

"Why, of course, Tedham, I felt sorry for you--"

"Oh, did you, did you?" He began to cry, and as we hurried along over
the fields, he sobbed with the wrenching, rending sobs of a man. "I
_knew_ you did, and I believe it was God himself that put it into your
heart to write me that letter and take off that much of the blame from
me. I said to myself that if I ever lived through it, I would try to
tell you how much you had done for me. I don't blame you for refusing to
do what I've asked you now. I can see how you may think it isn't best,
and I thank you all the same for that letter. I've got it here." He took
a letter out of his breast-pocket, and showed it to me. "It isn't the
first time I've cried over it."

I did not say anything, for my heart was in my throat, and we stumbled
along in silence till we climbed the last wall, and stood on the
sidewalk that skirted the suburban highway. There, under the
street-lamp, we stopped a moment, and it was he who now offered me his
hand for parting. I took it, and we said, together, "Well, good-by," and
moved in different directions. I knew very well that I should turn back,
and I had not gone a hundred feet away when I faced about. He was
shambling off into the dusk, a most hapless figure. "Tedham!" I called
after him.

"Well?" he answered, and he halted instantly; he had evidently known
what I would do as well as I had.

We reapproached each other, and when we were again under the lamp I
asked, a little awkwardly, "Are you in need of money, Tedham?"

"I've got my ten years' wages with me," he said, with a lightness that
must have come from his reviving hope in me. He drew his hand out of his
pocket, and showed me the few dollars with which the State inhumanly
turns society's outcasts back into the world again.

"Oh, that won't do." I said. "You must let me lend you something."

"Thank you," he said, with perfe