ceeded in casting it off--or at least
some of it--had it not been for the fact that in spite of herself she
worshipped its incarnation in the shape of my father. Her voice trembled
a little as she drew me to the sofa beside the window.

"Tell me about what happened, my son," she said.

It was a terrible moment for me. For my affections were still quiveringly
alive in those days, and I loved her. I had for an instant an instinctive
impulse to tell her the whole story,--South Sea Islands and all! And I
could have done it had I not beheld looming behind her another figure
which represented a stern and unsympathetic Authority, and somehow made
her, suddenly, of small account. Not that she would have understood the
romance, but she would have comprehended me. I knew that she was
powerless to save me from the wrath to come. I wept. It was because I
hated to lie to her,--yet I did so. Fear gripped me, and--like some
respectable criminals I have since known--I understood that any
confession I made would inexorably be used against me.... I wonder
whether she knew I was lying? At any rate, the case appeared to be a
grave one, and I was presently remanded to my room to be held over for
trial....

Vividly, as I write, I recall the misery of the hours I have spent, while
awaiting sentence, in the little chamber with the honeysuckle wall-paper
and steel engravings of happy but dumpy children romping in the fields
and groves. On this particular March afternoon the weather had become
morne, as the French say; and I looked down sadly into the grey back yard
which the wind of the morning had strewn with chips from the Petrel. At
last, when shadows were gathering in the corners of the room, I heard
footsteps. Ella appeared, prim and virtuous, yet a little commiserating.
My father wished to see me, downstairs. It was not the first time she had
brought that summons, and always her manner was the same!

The scene of my trials was always the sitting room, lined with grim books
in their walnut cases. And my father sat, like a judge, behind the big
desk where he did his work when at home. Oh, the distance between us at
such an hour! I entered as delicately as Agag, and the expression in his
eye seemed to convict me before I could open my mouth.

"Hugh," he said, "your mother tells me that you have confessed to going,
without permission, to Logan's Pond, where you embarked on a raft and
fell into the water."

The slight emphasis he contriv