they
help you?" Gaston flung his head back and looked at her.

"But they didn't find out. At least, they found out that I took the
money--there wasn't anything else to tell. That damnable fact was
enough, wasn't it? No amount of whimpering as to why I'd done it would
have helped."

"But your brother?"

"He tried to get me to go away. He said in a few days all would be
right. He could then save everything. I could return and
repay--and--well! I wasn't made that way. I stayed."

"And--the girl?"

"She asked me if I had done it--she would believe no one else. I said
yes; and that ended it. Her father tried to get me to explain--he was
the Judge who was to have tried me--I refused and he begged to be
released from sentencing me--that's all he could do for either of us."

"And--your--mother?" A sob rose in Joyce's throat.

"I think, even in her misery, she thanked God, since it had to be, that
it was not my brother."

The room was growing cold. Joyce shivered.

"And then?" she faltered.

"Oh! then--" Gaston's face twitched, and his voice was bitter, "then
came the star-gazing through the bars--and all the rest, until I came up
here. Only one stuck to me through thick and thin."

"Your brother?" Joyce interrupted.

"My brother? No! Just a plain friend. I told him I did not want to hear
a thing while I was shut away. I knew it would hold me back from getting
what I could out of the experience. It's like hell to have the outside
troubles and joys brought to you while you are bound hand and foot. I
saw enough of that--it did more to keep men in the mud than anything
else. I just kept that space of my life clear for expiation. When the
gates opened for me one day--my friend was there with all the news in a
budget.

"You see the lash that had cut deepest when I went away was something my
mother said; 'You've broken the hearts of them who loved and trusted
you.'

"Nothing had mattered so much as those words--and out of the disgrace,
the loneliness, the misery and deadly labour, I had worked out a plan to
make up to them for the wrong I had done. It was going to be about the
biggest job a fellow ever undertook; but, do you know, I had hoped that
I could do it?

"Well, my friend's words drove me back upon myself. There was nothing
for me to do."

"Why?"

"The hearts were all mended--after a fashion, without my aid."

"Your mother?"

"She had died soon after I went away."

"And your--brother--he surely--"