pounding the floor with my crutch.

Then, in my anger I arose and went stamping up and down the room, while
Tim sat there staring at me blankly. At last I halted by the fireplace
and stood there looking down at him very hard. I looked right into his
heart and read it. He winced and turned his face from me. I was the
righteous judge now and he the culprit.

"You left her, Tim," I said hotly. "You might have known the girl
could never marry me after that minute. You might have known she was
not the girl to deceive me--she would have told me; and then, Tim, do
you think that I would have kept her to her promise? Why didn't you
come to me and tell me?"

"For your sake, Mark, I didn't," Tim answered, looking up.

"And for my sake you left the girl there--you turned your back on her
and went away. Then in her perplexity she looked to me again, and I
had gone. I didn't know. I went away for her sake, and when she sent
for me I had forsaken her, too. That's a shabby way to treat a woman.
Do you wonder she turned to Weston?"

"No," Tim said, "for Weston is a man of men, he is--and he cared for
her--that's why he stayed in the valley."

"I knew that," said I, "for I saw it that day when he went away from me
to the charcoal clearing."

"Then think of the lonely girl up there on the hill, Mark," Tim said.
He joined me at the fireplace, and we stood side by side, as often we