“I camped to-night in a wood by a river and turned in early, feeling tired.  Voices drifted hazily into my slumber after a while and I awoke to find the moon riding high above the wood.  My fire was out, my room in the Tavern of Stars still carpeted in shadow.  Beyond in the moonlight two people had halted, a boy who was denouncing someone in a hard and bitter voice and, clinging to his arm, a girl in a cloak, whom I judged to be his sister.  Her eyes were like pools of ink and tragic with imploring, Laughter would have made her lovely.  As it was, with her lashes wet I could only think of Niobe and a passion of tears.  I have rarely seen in a woman’s face so much of the right kind of sweetness.  It was an exquisite vigor of sweetness, not in the least the kind that cloys.

“They were much alike, save that the boy’s face was angry and rebellious.  He was the younger of the two, seventeen or so, and would have been in rags but for an unbelievable amount of mending.

“When I awoke, he had, I think, been urging his sister to go with him and she had refused.  Before I could even so much as make them aware of my nearness, things came to a climax.  The boy with a curse pushed her away.  The hurt in his heart perhaps had made him rough.  But the girl shrank away from him with a sob and ran back up the hill.  He watched her climb to a hill-farm near the river, with shame and agony in his eyes, and I thought he would follow.  Instead he plunged most unexpectedly in my direction and finished his tragedy in comedy by stumbling over me.  We both scrambled to our feet a shade resentful.

“He realized instantly that I had overheard and blazed out at me in a passion of temper.  Running away had plainly given him an arrogant conviction of manhood.  Garry, old dear, I had to thrash him for the good of his soul and my Irish temper—­he was so offensively independent and unjust.

“It was a pretty job of thrashing but it did him good.  He threw himself on the ground and sobbed like the kid he is.  While he was pulling himself together, I built up the fire and made him some coffee.

“The blaze of the fire worried him—­he was afraid his sister would see it and come back.  But he drank the coffee and when I had damped the fire to ease his mind, I explained to him just why I’d felt the need of thrashing him.  For one thing I hadn’t cared for the way he spoke to his sister.  And for another I hadn’t cared at all for his insults to me.  He listened sullenly to the facts of my eavesdropping and apologized.  When he found that I was disposed to be friendly he blurted out his justification for running away:  an eccentric old invalid uncle who in all probability is not so evil as the boy claims.

“I had an odd feeling as we talked that he stands at the parting of the ways.  Chance will make or mar him.  And therefore I told him that if he insisted upon running away, he might as well tramp with me and think it over.