she was. No, no, the thing had gone too far, she must see it
through now. Better to endure the gnawings of conscience than give
herself away now. And Nyoda--Nyoda who had praised her so sincerely, and
Slim and the Captain, who thought it was a "bully stunt"--could she let
them know that it was all a lie? She shrank back shuddering from the
notion. No, she must go on. No one would ever find it out now. Other
people had received honors which they hadn't earned; the world was full
of them; thus she tried to soothe her conscience. But she averted her
eyes every time she passed the Buffalo Robe hanging over the fireplace
in Mateka.

Slumber came hard to her that night, and when she finally did drop off
it was to dream that the Buffalo Robe was being presented to her, but
just as she put out her hand to take it Mary Sylvester appeared on the
scene and called out loudly, "She doesn't deserve it!" and then all the
girls pointed to her in scorn and repeated, "She doesn't deserve it!"
"She doesn't deserve it!" until she ran away and hid herself in the
woods.

So vivid was the dream that she wakened, trembling in ever limb, and
burrowed into the pillow to shut out the sight of those dreadful
pointing fingers, which still seemed to be before her eyes. Once awake
she could not go back to sleep. She looked enviously across the tent at
Hinpoha, who lay calm and peaceful in the moonlight, a faint smile
parting her lips. She had nothing on her mind to keep her awake. Sahwah,
too, was wrapped in profound slumber, her brow serene and untroubled;
she had no uncomfortable secret to disturb her rest. How she envied
them!

She envied Oh-Pshaw, who had taken the swimming test that day after a
whole summer of trying to learn to swim, and was so proud of herself
that she seemed to have grown an inch in height. There was no flaw in
her happiness; she had won her honor fairly.

Then, as Agony lay there, her favorite heroines of history and fiction
seemed to rise up and repudiate her--Robert Louis Stevenson, with whom
she had formed an imaginary comradeship; there he stood looking at her
scornfully and coldly; Joan of Arc, her especial heroine; she turned
away in disgust; so all the others; one by one they reproached her.

Agony tossed for a long while and then rose, slipped on her bathrobe and
shoes and stockings and wandered about for awhile, finally sitting down
on a rustic bench on the veranda of Mateka, where she could look out on
the ri