Howard shook his head.  “Don’t you see, I am sick with an infernal cold,” he said.  “Got it tramping in the rain without my overcoat, and that fight I told you of has unstrung me.  It was a regular battle.  But you go yourself, and perhaps Eloise will come to see me.  I shall show her the Colonel’s confession, and she can do as she pleases about telling her mother.”

Jack left him and went to the dinner, which had been kept waiting some time, and at which Amy did not appear.  She had gone at once to bed, Eloise explained, when she took her seat at the table with Jack.  When told of Howard’s message, she said, “Of course I’ll go to him,” and half an hour later she was in his room, and greatly shocked at his white, haggard face, which indicated more than the cold of which he complained.  He did not tell her of his temptation.  It was not necessary.  He congratulated her upon her success, and upon her engagement, of which Jack had told him.  Then he gave her the paper he had found, and watched her as she read it, sometimes with flashes of indignation upon her face, and again with tears of pity in her eyes.

“He was a bad man,” she said, with great energy, and then added, “A good one, too, in some respects, although I cannot understand the pride which made him such a coward.”

“I can,” Howard rejoined.  “It’s the Crompton pride, stronger than life itself.  I know, for I am a Crompton.  You, probably, are more Harris than Crompton, and do not feel so deeply.”

He did not mean to reflect upon her mother’s family, but Eloise’s face was very red as she said, “The Harrises and Browns are not people to be proud of, I know, but they were as honest, perhaps, as the Cromptons, and they are mine, and if they all came here to-night I would not disown them.”

She looked every inch a Crompton as she spoke, and Howard laughed and said, “Good for you, little cousin; I believe you would, and if Jack finds the conductor in Boston, I dare say you will have him at your wedding.  When is it to be?”

“Just as soon as arrangements can be made,” Jack replied, coming in in time to hear the last of Howard’s remark, “and, of course, we’ll have the street conductor if he will come.  I start to-morrow to find him.”

He took an early train the next morning for Boston, and two days after he wrote to Eloise:  “I believe there are a million street cars in the city and fifty conductors by the name of Brown.  Fortunately, however, there is only one Andrew Jackson, or Andy, as they call him, and I found him on one of the suburban trains, rather old to be a conductor, but seemed young for his years.  He is your grandmother’s cousin, and was present at the double wedding, when Eudora Harris was married by Elder Covil to James Crompton, ‘a mighty proud-lookin’ chap,’ he said, ’who deserted her in less than a month.  I remember him well.  Pop threatened to shoot him if he ever cotched him, but the wah broke out and