the hedge which had struck him. So we
crawled home, all of us in a nice pickle, you may be sure. And then I
began to think of what father would say, and I couldn't bear to think
that he would have to blame me for it all; so I turned into a regular
sneaking coward, and gave Dick a sovereign to tell a lie and take the
blame on himself, promising him to make it all right with my father.
There, auntie, that's just the whole of it; and I'm sure I never knew
what a coward I was before. But only let me get well through this
scrape, and my name's not Walter if I ever get into such another."

"And now, dear boy, what are you going to do about this matter?" asked
his aunt after a pause.

"Do, auntie? I'm sure I don't know; I've done too much already. It's a
bad business at the best, and I don't see that I can do anything about
it without making it worse."

"Then, Walter, is the burden still to rest on the wrong shoulders? and
is Dick to be punished for your fault?"

"Oh, as to that, auntie, Dick shan't be the worse for it in the end: he
has had a _sovereign_ remedy already; and I'll beg him off from being
turned away when I see my father has quite cooled down."

Miss Huntingdon said nothing in reply, but laid one of her hands across
the other on her little work-table. Walter saw the action, but turned
his head away and fidgeted in his chair. At last he said, "That's
rather hard, auntie, to make me a moral coward again so soon."

"Is it hard, Walter?" she replied gently. "The next best thing to not
doing wrong is to be sorry for it when you have done it."

"Well, Aunt Kate, I _am_ sorry--terribly sorry. I wish I'd never
touched the horses. I wish that fellow Bob had been a hundred miles off
yesterday afternoon."

"I daresay, Walter; but is that all? Are you not going to _show_ that
you are sorry? Won't you imitate, as far as it is now possible, little
George Washington's moral courage?"

"What! go and tell my father the whole truth? Do you think I ought?"

"I am sure you ought, dear boy."

Walter reflected for a while, then he said, in a sorrowful tone, "Ah,
but there's a difference. George Washington didn't and wouldn't tell a
lie, but I would, and did; so it's too late now for me to show moral
courage."

"Not at all, Walter; on the contrary, it will take a good deal of moral
courage to confess your fault now. Of course it would have been far
nobler had you gone straight to your father and told him ju