ainst the wall formed a sort of
inclined plane, and making a detour he began to climb. Half-way up he
lost his footing and came tumbling to the ground; but still he said
nothing. The next time he was more careful, and reached the ridge-pole
without accident. Below, the little girl, brilliant in her red jacket,
stood watching him; but he never even glanced at her. Instead, he raised
himself to his full height, looked once at the ground beneath, and
jumped.

That instant a wave of contrition swept over Florence. In a sort of
vision she saw the boy lying injured, perhaps dead, upon the frozen
ground,--and all through her fault! She shut her eyes, and clasped her
hands over her face.

A few seconds passed, bringing with them no further sound, and she
slowly opened her fingers. Through them, instead of a prostrate corpse,
she saw the boy standing erect before her. There was a smear of dust
upon his coat and face where he had fallen, and a scratch upon his
cheek, which bled a bit, but otherwise he was apparently unhurt. From
beneath his long lashes as she looked, the blue eyes met hers,
deliberate and unsmiling.

As swiftly as it had come, the mood of contrition passed. In an
indefinite sort of way the girl experienced a sensation of
disappointment,--a feeling of being deprived of something which was her
due. She was only a child, a spoiled child, and her defiance arose anew.
A moment so the children faced each other.

"Do you still think I'm afraid?" asked the boy at last.

Again the hot color flamed beneath the brown skin.

"Pooh!" said the girl, "_that_ was nothing!" She tossed her head in
derision. "Anyone could do that!"

Ben slowly took off his cap, slapped it against his knee to shake off
the dust, and put it back upon his head. The action took only a half
minute, but when the girl looked at him again it hardly seemed he was
the same boy with whom she had just played. His eyes were no longer
blue, but gray. The chin, too, with an odd trick,--one she was destined
to know better in future,--had protruded, had become the dominant
feature of his face, aggressive, almost menacing. Except for the size,
one looking could scarcely have believed Ben's visage was that of a
child.

"What," the boy's hands went back into his pockets, "what wouldn't
anyone do, then?" he asked directly.

At that moment Florence Baker would have been glad to occupy some other
person's shoes. Obviously, the proper thing for her to do was t