“You’re pretty badly used up,” interrupted Miner, completing the sentence in his own way. “I know. I remember trying to play football once. Those little games aren’t much in my line. Nature meant me for higher things. I tried football, though, and then I said, like Napoleon--you remember?--‘Ces balles ne sont pas pour moi.’ I couldn’t tell where I began and the football ended--I felt that I was a safe under-study for a shuttlecock afterwards. That’s just the way you feel, isn’t it? As though it were Sunday, and you were the frog--and the boys had gone back to afternoon church? I know! Well--I’ll come back as soon as I’ve seen Routh. Good-bye, old man--don’t smoke too much. I do--but that’s no reason.” The little man nodded cheerfully, knocked the ashes carefully from the end of his cigar--he was neat in everything he did--and returned it to his lips as he left the room. Ralston leaned back in his arm-chair again and rested his feet on the fender. The fire his mother had made so carefully was burning in broad, smoking flames. He felt cold and underfed and weary, so that the warmth was very pleasant; and with all that came to his heart now, as he thought of his mother, there mingled also a little simple, childlike gratitude to her for having made up such a good fire. The time passed, and still no word came from Katharine. He was willing to find reasons or, at least, excuses, for her silence, but he was conscious that they were of little value. He knew, now, that there had really been paragraphs in the papers about him, as he had expected, and that they had been of a very disagreeable nature. Katharine had probably seen them, or one of them, besides having heard the stories that had been circulated by Crowdie and others during the previous evening. He fancied that he could feel her unbelief, hurting him from a distance, as it were. Her face, cold and contemptuous, rose before him out of the fire, and he took up the magazine again, and tried to hide it. But it could not be hidden. Surely by this time she must have got his letter. There could be no reasonable doubt of that. He looked at his watch again, as he had done once in every quarter of an hour for some time. It was twelve o’clock. Miner had not stayed long. John went over the scene on Wednesday evening, at the Thirlwalls’. Katharine had been very sure of herself, at the last--sure that, whatever he did, she should always stand by him. Events had put her to the test soon enough, and this was the result. They had been married twenty-four hours, and she would not even answer his note, because appearances were against him.