“You don’t know how hard it is, father,” he said, with that assurance with which boyhood always draws a line between itself and the rest of the world.  “Did you ever have to ask pardon of one who had fought you?”

General Keith’s face wore a singular expression.  Suddenly he felt a curious sensation in a spot in his right side, and he was standing in a dewy glade in a piece of woodland on a Spring morning, looking at a slim, serious young man standing very straight and still a few paces off, with a pistol gripped in his hand, and, queerly enough, his name, too, was Norman Wentworth.  But he was not thinking of him.  He was thinking of a tall girl with calm blue eyes, whom he had walked with the day before, and who had sent him away dazed and half maddened.  Then some one a little to one side spoke a few words and began to count, “One, two—­” There was a simultaneous report of two pistols, two little puffs of smoke, and when the smoke had cleared away, the other man with the pistol was sinking slowly to the ground, and he himself was tottering into the arms of the man nearest him.

He came back to the present with a gasp.

“My son,” he said gravely, “I once was called on and failed.  I have regretted it all my life, though happily the consequences were not as fatal as I had at one time apprehended.  If every generation did not improve on the follies and weaknesses of those that have gone before, there would be no advance in the world.  I want you to be wiser and stronger than I.”

Gordon’s chance of revenge came sooner than he expected.  Not long after he got out of doors again he was on his way down to the lake, where he was learning to swim, when a number of boys whom he passed began to hoot at him.  In their midst was Ferdy Wickersham, the boy who had crossed the ocean with him.  He was setting the others on.  The cry that came to Gordon was:  “Nigger-driver!  Nigger-driver!” Sometimes Fortune, Chance, or whatever may be the deity of fortuitous occurrence, places our weapons right to hand.  What would David have done had there not been a stony brook between him and Goliath that day?  Just as Gordon with burning face turned to defy his deriders, a pile of small stones lay at his feet.  It looked like Providence.  He could not row a boat, but he could fling a stone like young David.  In a moment he was sending stones up the hill with such rapidity that the group above him were thrown into confusion.

Then Gordon fell into an error of more noted generals.  Seizing a supply of missiles, he charged straight up the hill.  Though the group had broken at the sudden assault, by the time he reached the hill-top they had rallied, and while he was out of ammunition they made a charge on him.  Wheeling, he went down the hill like the wind, while his pursuers broke after him with shouts of triumph.  As he reached the stone-pile he turned and made a stand, which brought them to a momentary stop.  Just then a shout arose