of the cooling lotion on a linen cloth to
it." Then he and Captain Cavendish went their ways, and I went
toward home, creeping through the gap in the May hedge. But I did
not go far, having no mind to show my hurt, though I knew well that
my mother, being a woman and soft toward all wounds, would make much
of it, and maybe of me on its account. But I was not of a mind to
purchase affection by complaints of bodily ills, so I lay down under
the hedge in the soft grass, keeping my bruised shoulder uppermost,
and remained there thinking of the little maid, till finally the
pain easing somewhat, I fell asleep, and was presently awakened by a
soft touch on my sore shoulder, which caused me to wince and start
up with wide eyes, and there was Catherine Cavendish.

Catherine Cavendish I had seen afar, though not to speak with her,
and she being a year my senior and not then a beauty, and I being,
moreover, of an age to look at a girl and look away again to my own
affairs, I had thought no more of her, but I knew her at once. She
was, as I said before, not a beauty at that time, being one of those
maids which, like some flowers, are slow of bloom. She had grown so
fast and far that she had outspeeded her grace. She was full of
triangles instead of curves; her shyness was so intense that it
became aggressiveness. The greenness and sallowness of immaturity
that come before the perfection of bloom were on her face, and her
eyes either shrank before one or else gleamed fiercely with the
impulse of concealment. There is in all youth and imperfection a
stage wherein it turns at bay to protect its helplessness with a
vain show of inadequate claws and teeth, and Catherine Cavendish had
reached it, and I also, in my different estate as a boy.

Catherine towered over me with her slender height, her sallow hair
falling in silky ringlets over her dull cheeks, and when she spoke
her voice rang sharp where mine would have growled with hoarseness.

"Why did you not tell?" said she sharply, and I stared up at her
speechless, for I saw that she knew.

"Why did you not tell, and why were you whipped for it?" she
demanded again. Then, when I did not answer: "I saw it all. I hid
behind a tree for fear of the stallion. The child would have been
killed but for you. Why were you whipped for a thing like that?"
Then all at once, before I could answer, had I been minded to do so,
she burst out almost with violence with a brilliant red, surging up
f