Yet his conscience urged him always to confess. There was one phase of the situation, indeed, against which his conscience constantly rebelled. The D. V. & E. people were not now claiming the last line of stakes as their own, but they were alleging, by inference, if not directly, that the stakes set by Nicholson were removed in the night by the engineer of the T. & W. before he replaced them with his own. To meet this charge there was only the declaration of the members of the corps that made the night survey that there were no stakes in the gap when they went through. And against their contention was the impossibility of explaining in any other way how the evidences of Nicholson’s work could have so completely vanished between six o’clock and midnight of the same evening. It cut Dannie to the heart to hear this charge made and reiterated against the man who, in the short space of an hour, in the gray of one morning, had taken so powerful a hold upon his fancy, his boyish admiration, his heart-deep affection. Try as he would he could not rid himself of the vision of those clear blue eyes looking him through in sorrowful reproof. And yet--and yet he could not bring himself to an acknowledgment of his fault. Oh, those were wretched, dreadful autumn days. Now and again Aunt Martha tried to comfort him. She saw plainly enough that something was preying on his mind, and in her gentle, unobtrusive way she gave him opportunity to confide in her, but thus far she had not been gratified by the first whisper of his trouble. Abner Pickett, too, saw that the boy was suffering, but he imagined that it was from some physical disorder; and one day, when Dr. Chubbuck was driving by, he insisted that Dannie should submit to an examination by this old and trusted physician. The doctor, being unable to make a diagnosis of any physical trouble, left a prescription for some simple tonic, and promised to call again when he passed that way. So the autumn days went by and winter came. It came early and promised to be severe. Snow fell before Thanksgiving, and by the first of December sleighing was general throughout the country.