And the foolish girl, who had begun to waltz round the room like a mad thing, stopped and looked at me with tears in her eyes and her lips quivering. I could not but take some comfort from her confidence. "True," I said. "The Colonel brought him up, and it seems hardly possible that the lad should turn out so bad. But the photograph, my girl--the photograph? What do you say to that? It was Jim, I swear. I could not be mistaken. There could not be another so like him." "There is no one like him," she said softly. "Very well. And then I have noticed that he has been in bad spirits lately. I'm afraid--I'm afraid a bad conscience, my dear." "You dear old donkey!" she answered, shaking me with both her hands. "That was about me. He has told me all that. He thought Mr. Farquhar--Mr. Farquhar, indeed!" "Oh, that was it, was it?" I said. "Well, that may account for his depression. But look you here, Kitty; was he not rather nervous about his examination?" "A little," she answered with reluctance. "And, nonetheless, did he not come out pretty high?" "Seventeenth. Thirteen thousand four hundred and twenty-six marks," Kitty replied glibly. "Just so! And if he had failed he would have suffered in your eyes?" "Not a scrap. And, besides, he did not fail," she retorted. "But he may have thought he would suffer," I answered, "if he failed. That would be a sharp temptation, Kitty." She did not reply at once. She was busy rolling up a ribbon of her frock into the smallest possible compass, and unrolling it again. At last--it was clear I had made her think-- "I know he did not do it," she said, "but that is all I do know. I cannot prove to you that white is not black; but it is not, and I know it is not." "Well, my dear, I hope you are right," I answered. And it cheered me to find that she held him worthy of confidence. She promised readily to let me have the first word with the lad when he called next day. And as for undertaking to have nothing more to do with him if the charge proved to be true, she made nothing of that--because, as she said, it meant nothing. "A Jim who had done that would not be my Jim at all," she explained gaily, "but quite a different Jim--a James, sir."