"_Don't_ say it, then," I adjured him, with bitter resentment. "If you mention anything oval and metallic and glittering, I'll have a--a nervous prostration. Why do men of your profession want to wreck the nerves of your listeners by firing off the most obvious remarks, the stalest platitudes, the most hackneyed metaphors? Why can't you sometimes say something unexpected? I'd go to church if I could listen to sermons in which I didn't always know what was coming next." It was his turn to wince. An angry flush mounted to his cheeks, and he positively glowered at me. "Permit me to say," he thundered, extending his right arm in a pulpit gesture, "that I wasn't going to mention the gol"--I don't know what he wasn't going to mention, for I clapped my hands over my ears just in time to escape hearing, because I felt that I really couldn't bear a certain reference that he seemed bent upon making. The next words that reached me were: "--was about to say that if you pluck all the feathers off your goose out of season the result will be fatal. Mr. Waydean, you are behaving in----" "Don't," I implored--"don't Mr. Waydean me again. I'm _not_ old Waydean. I'm----" "You're not--Peter Waydean?" he gasped. "No,--I'm not." "I--I was told this was the Waydean homestead." "It is," I said, regaining my composure, "but he doesn't live here." He stared at me blankly. "And you?" "Oh, I'm only the city man." He picked up his hat and moved toward the door. "Good-afternoon," he said frigidly. Remorse for what was past and despair for what was to come gripped me. "I'm sorry for the mistake," I said, following him to the door, "but you wouldn't give me a chance to explain." Without a word or look in reply, he walked away, selfishly absorbed in his own thoughts. XV THE HARVEST I suppose the law of retributive punishment is, strictly speaking, a just one, but I feel sure there is such a thing as carrying it too far, especially when it is applied without regard to the mitigating circumstances that sometimes prompt a usually tractable man to kick over the traces. I think, in a case of this kind, a deeper moral effect may be obtained by the application of the beautiful theory that crime, like virtue, has its own inevitable reward, apart from any extraneous punishment that the human intellect can devise. Years before, when the latter philosophy was expounded to me by Marion during a discussion on the subject, it seemed a mere abstract proposition that verged on absurdity, but in the painful moments that elapsed between the departure of the minister and my hesitating entrance to the dining-room its true significance burst upon me like a ray of sunshine. I would remind Marion of her convictions; I would tell her I had adopted her view; she would refrain, in deference to her own unswerving opinions, to add to the mental anguish that had already led me to see how unwise it was to give way to evil impulses.