"Cora knows perfectly well that something peculiar happened to you," she advised him. "And she knows that I know what it was; and she says it isn't very sisterly of me not to tell her. Now, Hedrick, there was no secret about it; you didn't _confide_ your--your trouble to me, and it would be perfectly honourable of me to tell it. I wont{sic} unless you make me, but if you can't be polite and keep peace with Cora--at least while papa is sick I think it may be necessary. I believe," she finished with imperfect gravity, "that it--it would keep things quieter." The thoughts of a boy may be long, long thoughts, but he cannot persistently remember to fear a threatened catastrophe. Youth is too quickly intimate with peril. Hedrick had become familiar with his own, had grown so accustomed to it he was in danger of forgetting it altogether; therefore it was out of perspective. The episode of Lolita had begun to appear as a thing of the distant and clouded past: time is so long at thirteen. Added to this, his late immaculate deportment had been, as Laura suggested, a severe strain; the machinery of his nature was out of adjustment and demanded a violent reaction before it could get to running again at average speed. Also, it is evident that his destruction had been planned on high, for he was mad enough to answer flippantly: "Tell her! Go on and tell her--_I_ give you leaf! _that_ wasn't anything anyway--just helped you get a little idiot girl home. What is there to that? I never saw her before; never saw her again; didn't have half as much to do with her as you did yourself. She was a lot more _your_ friend than mine; I didn't even know her. I guess you'll have to get something better on me than that, before you try to boss _this_ ranch, Laura Madison!" That night, in bed, he wondered if he had not been perhaps a trifle rash; but the day was bright when he awoke, and no apprehension shadowed his morning face as he appeared at the breakfast table. On the contrary, a great weight had lifted from him; clearly his defiance had been the proper thing; he had shown Laura that her power over him was but imaginary. Hypnotized by his own words to her, he believed them; and his previous terrors became gossamer; nay, they were now merely laughable. His own remorse and shame were wholly blotted from memory, and he could not understand why in the world he had been so afraid, nor why he had felt it so necessary to placate Laura. She looked very meek this morning. _That_ showed! The strong hand was the right policy in dealing with women. He was tempted to insane daring: the rash, unfortunate child waltzed on the lip of the crater. "Told Cora yet?" he asked, with scornful laughter. "Told me what?" Cora looked quickly up from her plate. "Oh, nothing about this Corliss," he returned scathingly. "Don't get excited." "Hedrick!" remonstrated his mother, out of habit.