“I hate like the mischief to put such things down on paper,” wrote the boy, “but I said I’d tell the whole thing and I will, even if it does come out hard, so you will know it isn’t any worse than it is.  It is bad enough I’ll admit, I hadn’t any business to make fool love to her when I really didn’t care a picayune.  And I hadn’t any business to be there in Holyoke at all when you thought I was at Hal’s.  I did go to Hal’s but I only stayed two days.  The rest of the time I was with Madeline and knew I was going to be when I left the Hill.  That part can’t look any worse to you than it does to me.  It was a low-down trick to play on you when you had been so white about the car and everything.  But I did it and I can’t undo it.  I can only say I am sorry.  I did try afterward to make up a little bit by keeping my word about the studying.  Maybe you’ll let that count a little on the other side of the ledger.  Lord knows I need anything I can get there.  It is little enough, more shame to me!”

Then followed the events of the immediately preceding months from Madeline Taylor’s arrival in the college town on to the stunning revelation of old Doctor Hendricks’ letter.

“You don’t know how the thing made me feel.  I couldn’t help feeling more or less responsible.  For after all I did start the thing and though Madeline was always too good a sport to blame me I knew and I am sure she knew that she wouldn’t have taken up with Hubbard if I hadn’t left her in the lurch just when she had gotten to care a whole lot too much for me.  Besides I couldn’t help thinking what it would have been like if Tony had been caught in a trap like that.  It didn’t seem to me I could stand off and let her go to smash alone though I could see Doc Hendricks had common sense on his side when he ordered me to keep out of the whole business.

“I had all this on my mind when I came home that last time when Granny was dying.  I had it lodged in my head that it was up to me to straighten things out by marrying Madeline myself though I hated the idea like death and destruction and I knew it would about kill the rest of you.  I wrote and asked her to marry me that night after Granny went.  She wouldn’t do it.  It wasn’t because she didn’t love me either.  I guess it was rather because she did that she wouldn’t.  She wouldn’t pull me down in the quick sands with her.  Whatever you may think of what she was and did you will have to admit that she was magnificent about this.  She might have saved herself at my expense and she wouldn’t.  Remember that, Uncle Phil, and don’t judge her about the rest.”

Doctor Holiday ceased reading a moment and gazed into the fire.  By the measure of his full realization of what such a marriage would have meant to his young nephew he paid homage to the girl in her fine courage in refusing to take advantage of a chivalrous boy’s impulsive generosity even though it left her the terrible alternative which later she had taken.  And he thought with a tender little smile that there was something also rather magnificent about a lad who would offer himself thus voluntarily and knowingly a living sacrifice for “dear Honor’s sake.”  He went back to the letter.