Peter recovered the cat, and standing with her in his arms, he said to Jason: “I think that you’ve done about the only thing left for you. I believe after this you can’t go back to school. I’ll get the carpenter to put in that partition as quick as he can, and if you’d like the walls fresh, we’ll cover ’em with a cheap paper, and you may get some blinds to put on the windows. You may go to Thornton’s drug store and get you a hand lamp if so be you want to keep up your studies. You may get a little table to match your bed at Jefferson’s, and a chair, and then I feel you’ll be better fixed than you’ve ever been before.” He locked the store for the night and carried Jezebel across the street, where he formally presented her to the druggist. The next morning Mahala entered Peter Potter’s grocery with an order to give to Peter, but when she saw Jason behind the counter, she went to him with it instead. As she handed the slip to him she said: “You’ll have to hurry, Jason, or you’ll be late to school. I missed you yesterday.” Jason slowly shook his head. To have saved his life he could not have kept a couple of big tears from squeezing from his eyes and rolling down his white cheeks. He turned his back and swallowed hard. He fought with all his might to wink away the tears. Mahala looked at him in consternation. She could plainly see that he had suffered terribly since she last had seen him. All the rising tide of fair play, of compassion in her heart, surged up to her lips and she began to quiver. “Oh, Jason!” she cried. “What happened to you? What did they do to you?” Then Jason turned to her. “Nothing,” he said. “They didn’t get me, but it’s no use for me to go back to school. I’d be expelled before noon, you know I would.” Mahala stood still, thinking. She lifted her clear, steady eyes to the equally clear, steady eyes of the boy before her. “I’m afraid you would, Jason,” she said softly. “You shouldn’t have hit him.” Jason considered that a minute and then he said conclusively: “Yes, I should have hit him. What I did that was wrong was to throw something and hide among the bushes. If I had been a man I’d have beaten him as he deserved with my fists on the street. It was not because I was afraid of him; it was because I dared not be seen where I was. You understand, don’t you?” Mahala stood so still that it scarcely seemed as if she were breathing. “Yes,” she said in a hushed voice, “I understand.”