y where the conversation
immediately shifted to other topics. In the jumble of narrative his
chance to speak was swallowed up nor during the next few days did any
suitable opportunity occur for him to make his belated confession. When
Mr. Tolman was not at meetings of the railroad board he was at his
office or occupied with important affairs, and by and by so many events
had intervened that to go back into the past seemed to Stephen idle
sentimentality. At length he had lulled his conscience into deciding
that in view of the conditions it was quite unnecessary to acquaint his
father and mother with his wrong-doing at all. He was safely out of the
entanglement and was it not just as well to accept his escape with
gratitude and let sleeping dogs lie? All the punishments in the world
could not change anything now. What would be the use of telling?

CHAPTER II

A MEETING WITH AN OLD FRIEND

The day of the excursion to Northampton was one of those clear mornings
when a light frost turned the maples to vermilion and in a single night
transformed the ripening summer foliage to the splendor of autumn. The
Tolman family were in the highest spirits; it was not often that Mr.
Tolman could be persuaded to leave his business and steal away for a
week-end and when he did it was always a cause for great rejoicing.
Doris, elated at the prospect of rejoining her college friends, was also
in the happiest frame of mind and tripped up and down stairs, collecting
her forgotten possessions and jamming them into her already bulging
suitcase.

As for Steve, the prickings of conscience that had at first tormented
him and made him shrink from being left alone with his father had quite
vanished. He had argued himself into a state of mental tranquility
where further punishment for his misdemeanor seemed superfluous. After
his hairbreadth escape from disaster there was no danger, he argued, of
his repeating the experiment, and was not this the very lesson all
punishments sought to instill? If he had achieved this result without
bothering his father about the details, why so much the better. Did not
the old adage say that "experience is the best teacher"? Certainly in
this case the maxim held true.

Having thus excused his under-handedness and stifled the protests of his
better nature he felt, or tried to feel, entirely at peace with the
world; and as he now sauntered out to greet the new day he did it as
jauntily as if he had nothing