ch a difference in a
bright, healthy, vigorous girl. All her youthful vivacity was gone; she
was pale and spiritless with deep rings beneath her eyes and the lids
red with crying. After the services were over, I approached her a moment
as she stood in her black dress aloof from the others at the edge of the
little family burying-ground. She greeted me with a tremulous smile, and
then as her glance wandered back to the pile of earth that two men were
already shoveling into the grave, her eyes quickly filled with tears.

"I loved him as much as if he were my own father," she cried, "and it's
my fault that he's dead. I made him go!"

"No, Polly, it is not your fault," I said decisively. "It was a thing
which no one could foresee and no one could help."

She waited a moment trying to steady her voice, then she looked up
pleadingly in my face.

"Radnor is innocent; tell me you believe it."

"I am sure he is innocent," I replied.

"Then you can clear him--you're a lawyer. I know you can clear him!"

"You may trust me to do my best, Polly."

"I hate Jim Mattison!" she exclaimed, with a flash of her old fire. "He
swears that Rad is guilty and that he will prove him so. Rad may have
done some bad things, but he's a good man--better than Jim Mattison ever
thought of being."

"Polly," I said with a touch of bitterness, "I wish you might have
realized that truth earlier. Rad is at heart as splendid a chap as ever
lived, and his friends ought never to have allowed him to go astray."

She looked away without answering, and then in a moment turned back to
me and held out her hand.

"Good-by. When you see him again please tell him what I said."

As she turned away I looked after her, puzzled. I was sure at last that
she was in love with Radnor, and I was equally sure that he did not know
it; for in spite of his sorrow at his father's death and of the
suspicion that rested on him, I knew that he would not have been so
completely crushed had he felt that she was with him. Why must this come
to him now too late to do him any good, when he had needed it so much
before? I felt momentarily enraged at Polly. It seemed somehow as if the
trouble might have been avoided had she been more straightforward. Then
at the memory of her pale face and pleading eyes I relented. However
thoughtless she had been before, she was changed now; this tragedy had
somehow made a woman of her over night. When Radnor came at last to
claim her, they wo