But the young people, crying out all together against this last unparalleled meanness, had not reached the foot of the hill, where some of them separated, when they heard the quick pound of running feet behind them and a hoarse voice calling on Thomas Payne to stop.  They all turned, and William came up, pale and breathing hard.  “What did you pay him?” he asked of Thomas Payne.

“See here, William, we all know you had nothing to do with it,” Thomas cried out.

“What did you pay him?” William repeated, in a stern gasp.

“It’s all right.”

“You tell me what you paid him.”

Thomas Payne blushed all over his handsome boyish face.  He half whispered the amount to William, although the others knew it as well as he.

William pulled out his purse, and counted out some money with trembling fingers.  “Take it, for God’s sake!” said he, and Thomas Payne took it.  “We all know that you knew nothing about it,” he said again.  The others chimed in with eager assent, but William gave his head a shake, as if he shook off water, and broke away from them all, and pelted up the hill with his heart so bitterly sore that it seemed as if he trod on it at every step.

A voice was crying out behind him, but he never heeded.  There were light, hurrying steps after him, and a soft flutter of girlish skirts, but he never looked away from his own self until Rebecca touched his arm.  Then he looked around with a start and a great blush, and jerked his arm away.

But Rebecca followed him up quite boldly, and caught his arm again, and looked up in his face.  “Don’t you feel bad,” said she; “don’t you feel bad.  You aren’t to blame.”

“Isn’t he my father?”

“You aren’t to blame for that.”

“Disgrace comes without blame,” said William, and he moved on.

Rebecca kept close to his side, clinging to his arm.  “It’s your father’s way,” said she.  “He’s honest, anyway.  Nobody can say he isn’t honest.”

“It depends upon what you call honest,” William said, bitterly.  “You’d better run back, Rebecca.  You don’t want them to think you’re going with me, and they will.  I’m disgraced, and so is Rose.  You’d better run back.”

Rebecca stopped, and he did also.  She looked up in his face; her mouth was quivering with a kind of helpless shame, but her eyes were full of womanly courage and steadfastness.  “William,” said she, “I ran away in the face and eyes of them all to comfort you.  They saw me, and they can see me now, but I don’t care.  And I don’t care if you see me; I always have cared, but I don’t now.  I have always been terribly afraid lest you should think I was running after you, but I ain’t afraid now.  Don’t you feel bad, William.  That’s all I care about.  Don’t you feel bad; nobody is going to think any less of you.  I don’t; I think more.”

William looked down at her; there was a hesitating appeal in his face, as in that of a hurt child.  Suddenly Rebecca raised both her arms and put them around his neck; he leaned his cheek down against her soft hair.  “Poor William,” she whispered, as if he had been her child instead of her lover.