e of
her eyes was under the forced light of the gas-globes. He had seen her
only two or three times since that blush-kindling noon at Crestcliffe
Inn. Their Paradise goings and comings had not coincided very evenly.

"You are just the same rude boy, aren't you?" she said leniently. "Are
there no girls in Beersheba to teach you how to be nice?"

"I didn't mean it that way," he hastened to say. "I'm always saying the
wrong thing to you. But if you only knew, you wouldn't speak to me; much
less let me sit here and talk to you."

"If I only knew what? Perhaps you would better tell me and let me judge
for myself," she suggested; and out of the past came a flick of the
memory whip to make him feel again that she was immeasurably his senior.

"I'm expelled," he said bluntly.

"Oh!" For a full minute, as it seemed to him, she looked steadfastly out
of the window at the wall of blackness flitting past, and the steady
drumming of the wheels grated on his nerves and got into his blood. When
it was about to become unbearable she turned and gave him her hand
again. "I'm just as sorry as I can be!" she declared, and the slate-blue
eyes confirmed it.

Tom hung his head, just as he had in the trying interview with Doctor
Tollivar. But he told her a great deal more than he had told the
principal.

"It was this way: three of the boys came to my room to play
cards--because their rooms were watched. I didn't want to play--oh, I'm
none too good;"--this in answer to something in her eyes that made him
eager to tell her the exact truth--"I've done it lots of times. But that
night I'd been thinking--well, I just didn't want to, that's all. Then
they said I was afraid, and of course, that settled it."

"Of course," she agreed loyally.

"Wait; I want you to know it all," he went on doggedly. "When
Martin--he's the Greek and Latin, you know--slipped up on us, there was
a bottle of whisky on the table. He took down our names, and then he
pointed at the bottle, and said, 'Which one of you does that belong
to?' Nobody said anything, and after it began to get sort of--well, kind
of monotonous, I picked up the bottle and offered him a drink, and put
it in my pocket. That settled _me_."

"But it wasn't yours," she averred.

His smile was a rather ferocious grin. "Wasn't it? Well, I took it,
anyway; and I've got it yet. Now see here: that's my berth over there
and I'm going over to it. You needn't let on like you know me any more."

"Fidd