t's
nothing if you lie face down and keep your elbows in. That's all you'd
have got. Then it would have been over; now you've got to square
yourself. Well, brush up and come down to supper, and for the love of
Mike smile a little."

Butsey White's sentiments neither consoled nor convinced. Stover was
too firmly persuaded of the enormity of his offense and the depth of
his ignominy.

In all his life he had never done a more difficult thing than to
follow Butsey into the dining-room and face the disdainful glances of
those from whom he had so lately fled.

He sat in abject mental and physical suffering, his eyes on his plate,
tasting nothing of what went into his mouth, chewing mechanically.

Mr. Jenkins, to be affable, asked him how he had enjoyed the day. He
mumbled some reply, he never knew what, hearing only the dreadful
snicker that ran the table. He refused the dessert and left the
table. It had been a nightmare.

He stayed in his room, watching from behind the curtains his
fellow-beings romping and shrieking over a game of baby-in-the-hat.
The bottom had, indeed, dropped out of things--the universe was
topsy-turvy. More keenly than in the afternoon he felt the utter
hopelessness of his disgrace. If he could only get away--escape from
it all. If he only had had five dollars in his pocket he could have
reached Trenton and worked his way to some seaport town. He looked at
the now ridiculous souvenir toilet set and bitterly thought where the
precious dollars had gone--that story, too, would be abroad by the
morrow. The whole school would probably rise and jeer at him when he
entered chapel the next morning. That night he crept into his bed to
the stillness of the black room, to suffer a long hour that first
overwhelming anguish that can only be suffered once, that no other
suffering can compare to, that is complete, because the knowledge of
other suffering has not yet come, and he who suffers suffers alone.
Then the imagination came to the rescue. He fell into blissful
unconsciousness by a process of consoling half dreams in which he
vindicated himself by feats of extraordinary valor, carrying the
suffocating Tough McCarty and the Coffee-colored Angel out of burning
houses at the risk of his own life, and earning the plaudits of the
whole school.

Suddenly a peal of thunder shook the building; he landed all in a heap
in the midst of the sunlit floor, rubbing his eyes. Outside, the
morning came in with warm emb