on 'cut and run'? Well, we get it from George."

"Your surmises are intolerable!"

"Miss Liz, it isn't fair to condemn until you hear me!" It was the tone
of a much misunderstood penitent, and she hesitated. "I'll leave it to
the Colonel," he was continuing, but the old gentleman briskly
interrupted:

"You'll do nothing of the kind, sir!"

"Then I'll leave it to Jane--she may have some remote idea of
history--if I'm scandalizing your hero by saying he never set us the
extraordinary example you think. He was just a normal boy, a considerate
boy, and had no intention of worrying the family about that tree; but it
so happened that before he had time to sweep up the chips--which shows
he was a tidy boy!--his governor swooped right down on top of him, you
might say, and the game was up. George had cut, you see, Miss Liz, but
he couldn't run--and here's where he showed himself the genius which
ultimately resulted in our independence. He knew in a flash that this
was a tight place; it was an awful tight place; in fact, you might say
it pretty nearly squeezed him all over. There was the prostrate tree,
right before the old gentleman's eyes; and there was the old gentleman,
mad as hops, with his cane trembling in the air. There wasn't another
boy, or even another hatchet, in fifteen miles--and little George's mind
analyzed the full significance of that fact. It didn't take him a second
to see how the situation had to be handled; so, really, Miss Liz, I
think our lesson should be drawn, not from his love of truth, but from
his quick and accurate judgment. In all the English language there was
just one thing for him to say, and he said it. That's genius, Miss
Liz--but not always veracity."

"Some persons may think that way," she compressed her lips, taking care
to give the proper emphasis to persons. "There is no accounting for the
benighted mind. Thanks be to God that every man, woman and child of
intelligence knows otherwise."

Delivering herself of this, she calmly folded her hands and smiled at
Jane with an expression of triumph. Brent took a fleeting glance toward
the juleps.

But something now smote the Colonel's conscience. She looked so thin and
frail! He remembered, too, the suspicious watering of Zack's bad eye,
and what his good eye had seen in the "long room." In a gentle voice he
said:

"My dear, I hear that the sisters are asking where good cherries may be
had. It seems the convent would put up a certain co