er.

"Perhaps only by the magistrate," replied the other, soothingly; "let us
hope it will stop at that."

"But it must, it must!" cried Pocket wildly. "I'm absolutely innocent!
You said so yourself a minute ago; you've only to swear it as a doctor?
They can't do anything to me--they can't possibly!"

The doctor stood looking into the sunless garden with a troubled face.

"Dr. Baumgartner!"

"Yes, my young fellow?"

"They can't do anything to me, can they?"

Baumgartner returned to the fireside with his foreign shrug.

"It depends what you call anything," said he. "They cannot hang you;
after what I should certainly have to say I doubt if they could even
detain you in custody. But you would only be released on bail; the case
would be sent for trial; it would get into every paper in England; your
family could not stop it, your schoolfellows would devour it, you would
find it difficult to live down both at home and at school. In years to
come it will mean at best a certain smile at your expense! That is what
they can do to you," concluded the doctor, apologetically. "You asked me
to tell you. It is better to be candid. I hoped you would bear it like a
man."

Pocket was not even bearing it like a manly boy; he had flung himself back
into the big chair, and broken down for the first time utterly. One name
became articulate through his sobs. "My mother!" he moaned. "It'll kill
her! I know it will! Oh, that I should live to kill my mother too!"

"Mothers have more lives than that; they have more than most people,"
remarked Baumgartner sardonically.

"You don't understand! She has had a frightful illness, bad news of any
kind has to be kept from her, and can you imagine worse news than this?
She mustn't hear it!" cried the boy, leaping to feet with streaming eyes.
"For God's sake, sir, help me to hush it up!"

"It's in the papers already," replied Baumgartner, with a forbearing
shrug.

"But my part in it!"

"You said it had got to come out."

"I didn't realise all it meant--to her!"

"I thought you meant to make a clean breast of it?"

"So I did; but now I don't!" cried Pocket, vehemently. "Now I would give
my own life, cheerfully, rather than let her know what I've done--than drag
them all through that!"

"Do you mean what you say?"

Baumgartner appeared to be forming some conditional intention.

"Every syllable!" said Pocket.

"Because, you know," explained the doctor, "it is a case o