now and get
it."

"But I might fall."

"There's your chance," said Tom grinning. John stood, still irresolute.
Leila walked away into the stable.

"She'll get a man," said Tom a little regretful of his rudeness, as she
disappeared.

In a moment Leila was up in the hayloft and out on the roof. Spreading
out arms and thin legs she carefully let herself slide down the soft snow
until, seizing her cap, she set her feet on the roof gutter, crying out,
"Get a ladder quick." Alarmed at her perilous position, they ran and
called out a groom, a ladder was brought, and in a moment she was on the
ground.

Leila turned on the two lads. "You are a coward, Tom McGregor, and you
too, John Penhallow. I never--never will play with you again."

"It was just fun," said Tom; "any of the men could have poked it down."

"Cowards," said the girl, tossing back her dark mass of hair and moving
away without a look at the discomfited pair.

"I suppose now you will go and tell the Squire," said Tom. He was
alarmed.

She turned, "I--a tell-tale!" Her child-code of conduct was imperative.
"I am neither a tell-tale nor a coward. 'Tell-tale pick a nail and hang
him to a cow's tail!'" and with this well-known declaration of her creed
of playground honour, she walked away.

"She'll tell," said Tom.

"She won't," said John.

"Guess I'll go home," said Tom, and left John to his reflections.
They were most disagreeable.

John went into the woods and sat down on a log. "So," he said aloud, "she
called me a coward--and I am--I was--I can't bear it. What would my uncle
say?" His eyes filled. He brushed away the tears with his sleeve. A
sudden remembrance of how good she had been to him, how loyally silent,
added to his distress. He longed for a chance to prove that he was not
that--that--Eager and yet distrustful, he got up and walked through the
melting snow to the cabin, where he lay on the floor thinking, a prey to
that fiend imagination, of which he had a larger share than is always
pleasant when excuses are needed.

Leila was coldly civil and held her tongue, but for a few days would not
go into the woods with him and rode alone or with her uncle. Tom came no
more for a week, until self-assured that the Squire had not heard of his
behaviour, as he met him on the road with his usual hearty greeting. Ann
Penhallow saw that the boy was less happy than usual and suspected some
mild difficulty with Leila, but in her wise way said nothing an