promised the Professor to take
care of her."

"What?" cried Mr. Pound. "The Professor's daughter--the man who almost
killed Constable Lukens? Dav-id!"

"Yes, sir," I said. Penelope's hand was tightening in mine, and I
glanced to my side, to see her standing very straight, and the blue
ribbon was tilted as proudly as on that morning when we met by the
mountain brook.

"Dav-id!" cried my mother.

"Yes, sir," I said, looking right at Mr. Pound. "I promised the
Professor that I would take care of her--always."

CHAPTER VI

It was well for me that in my hours of absence fear had brought my
parents to a just estimate of my character and to a truer appreciation of
my essentiality to their happiness. My mother had long been haunted by a
conviction that I should meet an early death by drowning or an accidental
gunshot, and this very morning she had awakened from a dream in which she
saw her only child floating on the murky waters of the mill-dam. Rushing
to my room and finding me gone, she had had her worst fears confirmed,
and at the moment of my reappearance Mr. Pound was endeavoring to console
her for her loss and to bring her to a state of Christian resignation.
So all was forgotten in the joy of my unexpected return, and though in
the eyes of the minister, Miss Spinner, and the others I was just a small
black sheep about whose absence an unnecessary pother had been raised,
there was only rejoicing in the home fold. Even my father did not
humiliate me with forgiveness, but took me in his arms silently and held
me there, as he might have held me had he just rescued me from the depths
of the mill-dam. To follow such a greeting with chastisement, however
well merited, was quite out of the question. In the seclusion of my own
room I did meet with gentle chiding for the anguish I had caused, but my
mother remembered her dream, and my father his hours of futile searching,
and I knew that the hands which pressed mine would not be raised against
me in harsh reproof. Below us, I was sure, ears were strained to hear
some real evidence that I was receiving my deserts, for there was a
silence there like that outside of the prison wall when the crowd waits
for the doleful tidings tolled by the prison bell. Perhaps the listeners
were disappointed. I remember that Mr. Pound looked rather nonplussed as
he saw us coming down-stairs, my father leading the way, smiling gravely,
my mother following, clutching my hand as