has sinned--has broken the law--I want him to be educated.
That's all."

"Look here," said Jeff, He bent forward to her and laid the finger of
one trade-stained hand in the other palm. "You're emasculating the whole
nation. Let us be educated, but let us take our good hard whacks."

"Hear! hear!" said Choate, speaking mildly but yet as a lawyer, who
spent his life in presenting liabilities for or against punishment.
"That's hot stuff."

"I believe in law," said Jeff rapidly. "Sometimes I think that's all I
believe in now."

Anne and Lydia looked at him in a breathless waiting upon his words. He
had begun to justify himself to their crescent belief in him, the
product of the years. His father also waited, but tremulously. Here was
the boy he had wanted back, but he had not so very much strength to
accord even a fulfilled delight. Jeff, forgetful of everybody but the
old sybil he was looking at, sure of her comprehension if not her
agreement, went on.

"I'd rather have bad laws than no laws. I believe in Sparta. I believe
in the Catholic Church, if only because it has fasts and penances. We've
got to toe the mark. If we don't, something's got to give it to us good
and hard, the harder the better, too. Are we children to be let off from
the consequences of what we've done? No, by God! We're men and we've got
to learn."

Suddenly his eyes left Miss Amabel's quickened face and he glanced about
him, aware of the startled tensity of gaze among the others. Moore,
with a little book on his knee, was writing rapidly.

"Notes?" Jeff asked him shortly. "No, you don't."

He got up and extended his hand for the book, and Moore helplessly,
after a look at Miss Amabel, as if to ask whether she meant to see him
bullied, delivered it. Jeff whirled back two leaves, tore them out,
crumpled them in his hand and tossed them into the fireplace.

"You can't do that, Moore," he said indifferently, and Choate murmured a
monosyllabic assent.

Moore never questioned the bullying he so prodigally got. He never had
at college even; he was as ready to fawn the next day. It seemed as if
the inner man were small, too small for sound resentment. Jeff sat down
again. He looked depressed, his countenance without inward light. But
Lydia and Anne had rediscovered him. Again he was their hero, reclothed
indeed in finer mail. Miss Amabel rose at once. She shook hands with the
colonel, and asked Anne and Lydia to come to see her.

"Don't you do