need not put away this joy that had come to him. Surely friendship
was a good thing . . . and love. A man ought not to turn his back
on them.

It was long past midnight when he rose, took his father's sword
from the wall where it hung, and unsheathed it. A vision of an
open fireplace in a log house rose before him, his father in the
foreground looking like a picture of Stonewall Jackson. The kind
brave eyes that were the soul of honor gazed at him.

"You damned scoundrel! You damned scoundrel!" Jeff accused himself
in a low voice.

He knew his little friend was good and innocent, but he knew too
she had inherited a temperament that made her very innocence a

anger to her. Every instinct of chivalry called upon him to
protect her from the weakness she did not even guess. She had
given him her kindness and her friendship, the dear child! It was
up to him to be worthy of them. If he failed her he would be a
creature forever lost to decency.

There was a sob in his throat as Jeff pushed the blade back into
the worn scabbard and rehung the sword upon the wall. But the eyes
in his lifted face were very bright. He too would keep his sword
unstained and the flag of honor flying.

All through the next day and the next his resolution held. He took
pains not to see her alone, though there was not an hour of the
day when he could get away from the thought of her. The uneasy