an eternal disgrace and burden
the one thing that was hammering in Freckles' heart and beating in his
brain, past any attempted expression, was the fact that, while nameless
and possibly born in shame, the Angel had told him that she loved him.
He could find no word with which to begin to voice the rapture of his
heart over that. But if she regretted it--if it had been a thing done
out of her pity for his condition, or her feeling of responsibility, if
it killed him after all, there was only one thing left to do. Not for
McLean, not for the Bird Woman, not for the Duncans would Freckles have
done it--but for the Angel--if it would make her happy--he would do
anything.

"Angel," whispered Freckles, with his lips against her hair, "you
haven't learned your history book very well, or else you've forgotten."

"Forgotten what?" sobbed the Angel.

"Forgotten about the real knight, Ladybird," breathed Freckles. "Don't
you know that, if anything happened that made his lady sorry, a real
knight just simply couldn't be remembering it? Angel, darling little
Swamp Angel, you be listening to me. There was one night on the trail,
one solemn, grand, white night, that there wasn't ever any other like
before or since, when the dear Boss put his arm around me and told me
that he loved me; but if you care, Angel, if you don't want it that
way, why, I ain't remembering that anyone else ever did--not in me whole
life."

The Angel lifted her head and looked into the depths of Freckles' honest
gray eyes, and they met hers unwaveringly; but the pain in them was
pitiful.

"Do you mean," she demanded, "that you don't remember that a brazen,
forward girl told you, when you hadn't asked her, that she"--the
Angel choked on it a second, but she gave a gulp and brought it out
bravely--"that she loved you?"

"No!" cried Freckles. "No! I don't remember anything of the kind!"

But all the songbirds of his soul burst into melody over that one little
clause: "When you hadn't asked her."

"But you will," said the Angel. "You may live to be an old, old man, and
then you will."

"I will not!" cried Freckles. "How can you think it, Angel?"

"You won't even LOOK as if you remember?"

"I will not!" persisted Freckles. "I'll be swearing to it if you want me
to. If you wasn't too tired to think this thing out straight, you'd be
seeing that I couldn't--that I just simply couldn't! I'd rather give it
all up now and go into eternity alone, without ever