Gradually, under the Colonel’s shrewd questioning, Gerry Malory’s whole story came clear. Kitty had heard much of it before, but not all. He told about his mother, the strolling player; how after her death he had left grammar school, and ranged with a wild group of friends about the farms and the town. Then he was taken up for poaching in the squire’s woodland--caught the first unlucky time he set a bit of a rabbit snare. And the recruiting sergeant came by in the thick of the trouble, and there you were. No, he wasn’t a captain and never had been. He never thought pretending to be one was a dishonest trick, since he never gained thereby. He thought it was like taking a part in a play, and better to choose a leading part. He wasn’t even twenty years old, as he had said; wouldn’t be eighteen till next December came. Stark pondered. “All that I can see,” he murmured. “I been a lad myself, though, thank God, none such a foolhardy one. But after the battle--what did you do with the boots you wore when they brought you in, the boots that went with your British uniform?” “My boots?” asked Gerry. He looked down at his feet. He was wearing a pair of cowhide shoes Kitty had bought for him at a shop in Medford Square. “Why, I don’t know what became of my boots.” “I hid them,” said Kitty defiantly. “I was afraid--if the doctors thought he was British--they’d just let him die. I pulled them off, and took them outside, and threw them down the well.” Colonel Stark slapped his knee and laughed with a quiet, wry kind of mirth. “So I suppose from now on the water at The Sign of the Sun will taste o’ British leather,” he said. Then he turned to Gerry. “Well, a spirited lass is none so bad to have for a wife. I got one myself. Do you mean to marry her for her kindness to you--if you don’t have to hang, of course?” “Not for her kindness,” said Gerry Malory firmly, his eyes lighting. “I mean to marry her--well, because I mean to marry her.” “Well enough said,” agreed the colonel. “But I mentioned the other, the hanging matter. Can you think of any reason against it?” A tragic look came over Gerry’s face, and his voice took on a deep vibrant note of pleading. It seemed to Kitty that she could see and hear his actress mother there. “You wouldn’t hang a man for a mistake, would you, Colonel? A mistake that was made a hundred and fifty years ago?” He paused and shut his eyes dramatically. Colonel Stark gave Kitty a slow, solemn wink, and she knew that he was thinking of the actress mother, too. “What was the mistake, lad,” he demanded, “and who made it? You weren’t making mistakes a hundred and fifty years ago. Yours were all ahead of you then.”