or
his brother's cause; he was baffled and infuriated by the general
unquestioning belief in Frank's guilt, and a dozen times had been
compelled to sit biting on his bitterness, when every instinct impelled
him to square up and teach the fools better with all the force of his
pugilistic knowledge. Of late years he had been schooled in a class that
accepted 'a ready left' as the most convincing argument, and, being
beyond the immediate province of law and order, repaired immediately with
all its grievances to a twenty-four-foot 'ring' and an experienced
referee. But whilst there was a little diffidence amongst the men in
expressing their opinions about Frank, there was no reserve when they
came to tell of Ephraim Shine's method of improving the occasion with
prayer and preachment; and for a considerable time Harry had collected
bitterness till it threatened to choke him and bade him defy all his
mother's cautious principles.

Ephraim had given out the third verse, and the singing went on.

'Are you thinking?' whispered the girl. 'Do, do think! Think of the
disgrace of it.'

'Disgrace! There's the disgrace whining on the platform, the brute that
insults a woman in her sorrow, thinking there's no one handy to take it
out of the coward hide of him!

'It was wrong, Harry. I know it was wrong and cruel. I told him that, and
he has promised me never to do it again. He has promised me that, really,
truly.'

The word that slid through Harry's teeth was ferocious but inaudible.

'Say you won't do it!

The singing ceased suddenly, and the superintendent, who all the time had
kept a lowering and anxious eye on the young couple, gave out the third
verse again.

'Harry, you will not. Please say it!

The hand holding the stockwhip stirred threateningly, and the hymn was
almost lost in the agitation of the worshippers. Chris remained silent,
and Harry, who had taken the book again, had shifted his stern eyes to
the slim white thumb beside his broad brown one. A stifled sob at his
side startled him, and he turned a swift glance upon the face of his
companion. That one glance, the first, left his brave resolution shaken
and his spirit awed.

Harry remembered Chris as a schoolgirl, tall and stag-like, always
running, her rebellious knees tossing up scant petticoats, her long hair
rarely leaving more than one eye visible through its smother of tangled
silk. She was very brown then and very bony, and so ridiculously soft of
he