he levelled barrel, then into the air and down in the dew
upon his face.

The boy buried his face and wept; but even in his anguish he now recalled
the shout before the shot. The enforced description had been so vivid in
the end that he beheld the scene as plainly as though he had been wide
awake. Then he dwelt upon the dead man, looking nothing else as he now
remembered him, and that sent him off at a final tangent.

He cried, looking up with a shudder for all his tears, "What about that
negative you smashed? It was the poor dead man all the time!"

"It was," replied Baumgartner; "but it was never meant to be. I had you
in focus when you fired. What I did was done instinctively, but with time
to think I should have done just the same. You had given me the chance of
a lifetime, though nothing has come of it so far. And that was another
reason for saving you, ill as you were, from the immediate consequences of
an innocent act."

Pocket was passionately honest, as his worst friends knew; he had an
instinctive admiration for downright honesty in another. His young soul
was torn with grief and pity for the dead; he was already haunted by the
inevitable and complex consequences of his fatal misadventure, and yet he
could dimly appreciate the candid declaration of one who had attempted to
turn that tragedy to instantaneous and inconceivable account. It was the
mistaken kindness to himself that he still found most difficult to
forgive.

"It's got to come out," he groaned; "this will make it all the worse."

"You mean the delay?"

"Yes! Who's to tell them I didn't do it on purpose, and run away, and
then think better of it?"

Baumgartner smiled.

"Surely I am," said he; but his smile went out with the words. "If only
they believe me!" he added as though it was a new idea to him.

It was a terrifying one to Pocket.

"Why shouldn't they?" was his broken exclamation.

"I don't know. I never thought of it before. But what can I swear to,
after all? I can swear you shot a man, but I can't swear you shot him in
your sleep!"

"You said you saw I did!"

"So I did, my young fellow," replied the doctor, with a kinder smile; "at
least I can swear that you were walking with your eyes shut, and I thought
you were walking in your sleep. It's not quite the same thing. It is
near it. But we are talking about my evidence on oath in a court of
justice."

"Shall I be tried?" asked the schoolboy in a hoarse whisp