recognized a member of the household, an old and neglected girl. I was not afraid of her, and I bowed. And I felt a sudden looseness, a giving away of a part of my gear. She called me Mr. Hawes, the very first time that any one had called me anything but Bill; she opened the door and bade me go in. I had to duck my head as I stepped forward, and there I was inside the room with the light pouring over me. I took one step forward, and stumbled over something, and then a tittering fool named Bentley, exclaimed: "Hello, here comes little Willie." I don't know how I got out. I heard a roar of laughter, I saw grinning faces jumbled together, and then I was outside, standing with my hot hand resting in the frost on the top rail of a fence. Some one was urging me to come back--the neglected girl--but I stood there silent, with my hot hand melting the frost. I went out into the moon-lighted woods, seized a sapling and almost wrenched it from the ground. Down the road I went toward home, but I turned aside and sat on a log. I felt a sense of pain and I opened my hands--I had been cutting my palms with my nails. But in this senseless fury I had made up my mind. I would waylay Bentley and beat him. Hour after hour I sat there. Horses began to canter by; up and down the road there was laughter and merry chatting. The moon was full, and I could plainly see the passers-by. Suddenly I sprang from the log and seized a bridle rein. A girl shrieked and a man cut my hand with a whip, and I jerked the horse to his knees. Bentley shouted that he would kill me if I did not let go, but I heeded not; I jerked him off his horse, kicked his pistol across the road, mashed his mouth, slammed him against the ground. The shrieking girl cried out that I was a brute, and I told her that I could whip her whole family, a charming bit of repartee, I thought, but afterward I remembered that her family consisted of herself and an aged grandmother, and I sent her an abject apology. Bentley's horse cantered away, and I left the fellow lying in the road, with the girl standing over him, shrieking for help. It was all done in a minute, and with jolting tread I stalked away before any one came up. Of course there was a great scandal. My poor mother was grieved and humiliated, ashamed to meet any of the neighbors; and my father swore that instead of becoming a school teacher I ought to turn out as a highwayman. My brothers thought to have some fun with me, but I frightened them with a roar, and for a time they were afraid to smile in my presence. I was almost heartbroken over my disgrace. Without undue praise I can say that I was generous and kindhearted; even as a child I had shown almost a censurable unselfishness; I had given away my playthings, and my sensibilities were so tender that I could not bear the sight of a suffering animal, and I remember that an old man laughed at me because I could not cut the throat of a sheep when the poor thing had been hung up by the heels.