the maid's Deity could not compel a
lad to righteousness: I could with perfect complacency conduct myself
perversely before it. And must we then, lads and men, worship a God of
wrath, quick to punish, niggardly in fatherly forgiveness, lest we
stray into evil ways? I do not know. 'Tis beyond me to guess the
change to be worked in the world by a new conception of the eternal
attributes.

"An' will you not?" says she.

It chanced, now, that she held the lamp near her face, so that
her beauty was illumined and transfigured. 'Twas a beauty most
tender--most pure and elfin and religious. 'Tis a mean, poor
justification, I know, to say that I was in some mysterious way--by
the magic resident in the beauty of a maid, and virulently,
wickedly active within its sphere, which is the space the vision
of a lad may carry--that I was by this magic incapacitated and
overcome. 'Tis an excuse made by fallen lads since treason was
writ of; 'tis a mere excuse, ennobling no traitorious act: since
love, to be sure, has no precedence of loyalty in hearts of truth
and manful aspiration. Love? surely it walks with glorious modesty
in the train of honor--or is a brazen baggage. But, as it unhappily
chanced, whatever the academic conception, the maid held the lamp
too close for my salvation: so close that her blue, shadowy eyes
bewildered me, and her lips, red and moist, with a gleam of white
teeth between, I recall, tempted me quite beyond the endurance of
self-respect. I slipped, indeed, most sadly in the path, and came a
shamefaced, ridiculous cropper.

"An' will you not," says she, "pour but a quarter of a inch t' the
glass?"

"I will," I swore, "for a kiss!"

'Twas an outrageous betrayal of my uncle.

"For shame!" cries she.

"I will for a kiss," I repeated, my soul offered on a platter to the
devil, "regardless o' the consequences."

She matched my long words with a great one caught from my tutor. "God
isn't inclined," says she, with a toss, "in favor o' kisses."

And there you had it!

* * * * *

When we sat late, our maid-servant would indignantly whisk Judith off
to bed--crying out upon us for our wickedness.

"Cather," my uncle would drawl, Judith being gone, "ye're all wore out
along o' too much study."

"Not at all, Skipper Nicholas!" cries my tutor.

"Study," says my uncle, in solemn commiseration, "is a bitter thing t'
be cotched by. Ye're all wore out, parson, along o'