y faced each other
without shame. Neither had the slightest sense of hypocrisy in himself
or in his comrade. On the contrary!

Penrod's eyes went from Sam's medal back to his own; thence they
wandered, with perhaps a little disappointment, to the lifeless street
and to the empty yards and spectatorless windows of the neighbourhood.
Then he looked southward toward the busy heart of the town, where
multitudes were.

"Let's go down and see what time it is by the court-house-clock," said
Penrod.

CHAPTER X. CONSCIENCE

Mrs. Schofield had been away for three days, visiting her sister
in Dayton, Illinois, and on the train, coming back, she fell into a
reverie. Little dramas of memory were reenacted in her pensive mind, and
through all of them moved the figure of Penrod as a principal figure, or
star. These little dramas did not present Penrod as he really was,
much less did they glow with the uncertain but glamorous light in which
Penrod saw himself. No; Mrs. Schofield had indulged herself in absence
from her family merely for her own pleasure, and, now that she was
homeward bound, her conscience was asserting itself; the fact that she
had enjoyed her visit began to take on the aspect of a crime.

She had heard from her family only once during the three days--the
message "All well don't worry enjoy yourself" telegraphed by Mr.
Schofield, and she had followed his suggestions to a reasonable extent.
Of course she had worried--but only at times; wherefore she now suffered
more and more poignant pangs of shame because she had not worried
constantly. Naturally, the figure of Penrod, in her railway reverie, was
that of an invalid.

She recalled all the illnesses of his babyhood and all those of his
boyhood. She reconstructed scene after scene, with the hero always
prostrate and the family physician opening the black case of phials. She
emphatically renewed her recollection of accidental misfortunes to the
body of Penrod Schofield, omitting neither the considerable nor the
inconsiderable, forgetting no strain, sprain, cut, bruise or dislocation
of which she had knowledge. And running this film in a sequence
unrelieved by brighter interludes, she produced a biographical picture
of such consistent and unremittent gloom that Penrod's past appeared to
justify disturbing thoughts about his present and future.

She became less and less at ease, reproaching herself for having gone
away, wondering how she had brought herself to