It would seem by all the laws of psychology that this angry humility and consciousness of her own errors should have made pretty Peggy more tolerant of the mistakes and shortcomings of others; but by a strange revulsion, as she drew near the corner where Elinor Calvert sat gazing into vacancy as if turned to stone by the sight of the gorgon's head, her anger swiftly changed its object. Slowly and somewhat scornfully Peggy looked her over from head to foot. "Do you believe this calumny?" she asked. No answer from lips or eyes. "Oh, shame!" cried the girl. "I can bear it for the rest; but that you, who have known him half his life, you whom he loved, nay worshipped, putting you well nigh in the place of God above, that you should condemn him--oh, it is too much! Thank God he still has me to love and cling to him!" Slowly the stony face relaxed, the fixed eyes began to see things once more, but the voice was still dim and distant as Elinor answered,-- "Cease, child!--prate no more of what you feel for Christopher Neville! You say you love too much to doubt him. What is your love to mine? I _know_ him guilty, and yet, God help me, I love him still!" CHAPTER XII HOW LOVERS ARE CONVINCED Nothing is more impossible than to predict what one's emotions will be in any given crisis. If any one had told Christopher Neville that lying in a shed under accusation of murder, believed guilty by his lady love, cast off by his friend, his most acute sensation would be envy of the tobacco which the sentry was smoking outside the door, he would have laughed the prophet to scorn; yet so it was. The nervous strain, added to the cold of the tobacco-house, was more than he could bear, and beyond any spiritual help he craved physical stimulant, something to make "a man of him" again, to give him back that courage and coolness which had never yet deserted him, but which he felt now slipping away fast. At length he felt shame at such loss of manhood, and began to take himself to task. "Come, now, Christopher Neville, thou sourfaced son of ill fortune!" he said aloud, as if talking to another person, "state thy woes, one by one, and I will combat them with what heart I may. Begin then!--What first?" "I am in prison." "Where many a better man has been before thee. In a palace thou mightst be in worse company." "I am cold." "Walk about!" "I am hungry." "Pull down yonder tobacco-leaf and chew it." "My friends have forsaken me." "So did Job's." "My sweetheart has turned the cold shoulder to me." "Then do thou turn thy back full to her. Use thy reason, man alive! Hast thou lived to nigh forty years, to be hurt like a boy by a woman's inconstancy? Laugh at her, revile her if thou wilt, rip out round oaths; but, an thou be not quite demented, put not thy courage beneath the foot of her scorn!" "But I love her."