. "I trust
you, Robert," it said. "It is in you to do heedless things, to be
reckless, if only because you are young and eager and strong; but it
is not in you to be dishonourable; of this I am as certain as I am of
anything in life. Some day the truth will be known and you will be
cleared, but whether it is or no, I choose to walk beside you. I choose
it gladly, happily. I write the words again, gladly, happily, Robert.
Yours, Mary."

"Oh!" cried Margaret Elizabeth, lifting a glowing face, "I love Mary."

"She was brave and unselfish," said the Candy Man.

Margaret Elizabeth nodded. "Yes, that is one side of it. Still, you see,
she was sure, and it was, as she says, a joy to cast in her lot with
him. 'Gladly, happily.'" Her eyes shone. She gazed far away down the
river. The wind blew little tendrils of bright hair across her cheek.
"It must be so when you care very much," she went on.

"But," argued the Candy Man, "under the stress of very noble feeling
people sometimes do foolish things, do they not?"

"But this was not. Do you think for a moment Mary ever regretted it?
I see what you mean by the best of you. It is something to have such
credentials." Margaret Elizabeth's gaze met the Candy Man's, and her
eyes were deep as they had been on Christmas Eve, in the firelight.

Oh, Margaret Elizabeth, it is your own fault, for being so dear, so
unworldly! Could you, can you, cast in your lot with an unknown Candy
Man? He has no business to ask you. He did not mean to, but only to
prepare the way. He knows he is no great catch, even from the point of
view of a Little Red Chimney. These are not the precise words of the
Candy Man, but something like them....

So absorbed was Margaret Elizabeth in the thought of Mary, she was a bit
slow in taking in their meaning. She gave him one startled glance, and
then looked down, as it happened, upon the shabby little book which lay
on the step between them. Absently she drew it toward her, and with
fingers that trembled, opened it, as if to find her answer in its pages.
Then a smile began faintly to curl about her lips, and she read aloud
from the book:

_"What we find then to accord with love and reason, that we may
safely pronounce right and good."_

"Judged at the bar of reason I fear my case is hopeless," protested the
Candy Man, putting out his hand to close the book.

But Margaret Elizabeth clasped it to her breast. "I see nothing
unreasonable in it," she dec