“Toby Lassiter, talk about your--your hells on earth; talk about your flames of despair, the worm that dieth not, and the like. I had 'em all. I couldn't speak. I didn't even have the sense or power to shake hands, and the poor boy misunderstood even that. He pulled up a chair, shaking like a leaf. Nobody was in the room but us two. Then somehow I managed to say that he was mistaken, and that I hadn't come there for _that_ reason. I wanted to talk to the point and justify myself, but I was worse than a stuttering idiot at a spelling-bee. Like a fool, I started in to say that I had heard a lot about the progress of the town, and he thought I had some speculation on foot and had run on him by accident. I no sooner saw that he thought that than I got tangled up worse than ever. Nothing short of begging his forgiveness would set things straight, and I couldn't have got that out to have saved my soul from perdition.” “That certainly _was_ awkward,” Toby burst out, like an enthusiast at a play. “It was bad.” “I reckon we never would have understood each other, Toby, but we started to walk out together, and went along to a side street that run into a park where it wasn't so light. Somehow we went inside, and before I knew it I had laid my hand on his arm. I never had done a thing like that in all my life, and all of a sudden we stopped and he looked right in my face. It was too much for me, Toby. I couldn't hold in any longer. But it didn't do any harm, for I saw he understood me, and that was enough. He was the happiest creature I ever laid eyes on; he laughed and cried and petted me, and said that he loved me a hundred times more than he did old Whipple and his wife. Then we sat down on a bench under the trees and talked it all over. He talked to me more openly than he ever did before. He wanted to come home above all things, but he wanted to put it off awhile. He told me about him and Margaret Dearing. She was the only real sweetheart he'd ever had, he said, and he could never care for anybody else. It seems that they met by accident awhile back in New York, and she gave him to understand that she didn't care any more for him. He said it was because she knew of his shortage at the bank. But I told him how you and me had kept that quiet, and not to let that bother him. But he told me something that we didn't know: he said he had confessed it to her brother the night he left. He said a woman as high and proud as she was never could overlook anything bordering on dishonesty, no matter how much it was atoned for.” “She wouldn't be so hard on him if _that_ was all, Mr. Walton,” Toby said. “But, of course, she heard about the other thing; in fact, the girl and the child are right there under her eyes.”