"Bless you, Daniel!" said Charles, throwing his arm about his companion’s shoulders, as he used to do with his chums in college. "You just sit right still where you are. It was noble and honest of you to tell me that. I believe in my heart I like you all the better for it. We are brothers, you see, for I love her that way, too, and it gives me a lot of comfort to know you can understand me. But, old fellow—I don’t quite know how to say it—I’m deeply sorry that your love has brought you only pain, and I feel all the more warmly toward you that you tried to help her when you knew she belonged to some one else. I never can thank you enough." "I couldn’t have helped it," said Dan gruffly. "If anybody _loved_ her, they’d _have_ to take care of her, _if it killed ’em_." "Dan, old fellow, I love _you_," said Charles impulsively. "You can’t know what this is to me, that you took care of her when I couldn’t. I’ll love you always, and I shall never forget what you’ve done for me. Now, begin at the beginning and tell me all you know about her, won’t you? I’m hungry to hear." And Dan found himself telling the whole story of how Dawn had conquered him, the ringleader of mischief in the school, made him her slave, and helped him up to a plane where higher ambitions and nobler standards had changed his whole idea of life. As he listened to the homely, boyish phrases and read between the lines the pathos of Dawn’s struggles, Charles found tears standing in his eyes to think his little girl-wife had been through so much all by herself, without him near to help and comfort. Would he ever, ever, be able to make up to her for it? He expressed this thought clumsily to Dan, and the boy, all eager now with sympathy, and loving Charles as loyally as Dawn, said royally: "I calculate one sight of your face’ll make her forget it all. Leastways, that’s the way it looks to me." They talked at intervals all night. Charles drew from Daniel his ambition to get an education and be worthy to be the friend of such a teacher as he had had. The boy said it shyly, and then added, "And you too, if you’ll let me," and there in the early breaking of the morning light the two young men made a solemn compact of friendship through life. When the sun shone forth and touched the hills, glinting the Hudson in the distance, Daniel sat up and looked about him with a new interest in life, and a happier feeling in his heart than he had had since Dawn went away.