It was agreed that we had fallen into Logan’s Pond from a raft:  my suggestion.  Well, said Tom, the Petrel hadn’t proved much better than a raft, after all.  I was in no mood to defend her.

This designation of the Petrel as a “raft” was my first legal quibble.  The question to be decided by the court was, What is a raft? just as the supreme tribunal of the land has been required, in later years, to decide, What is whiskey?  The thing to be concealed if possible was the building of the “raft,” although this information was already in the possession of a number of persons, whose fathers might at any moment see fit to congratulate my own on being the parent of a genius.  It was a risk, however, that had to be run.  And, secondly, since Grits Jarvis was contraband, nothing was to be said about him.

I have not said much about my mother, who might have been likened on such occasions to a grand jury compelled to indict, yet torn between loyalty to an oath and sympathy with the defendant.  I went through the Peters yard, climbed the wire fence, my object being to discover first from Ella, the housemaid, or Hannah, the cook, how much was known in high quarters.  It was Hannah who, as I opened the kitchen door, turned at the sound, and set down the saucepan she was scouring.

“Is it home ye are?  Mercy to goodness!” (this on beholding my shrunken costume) “Glory be to God you’re not drownded! and your mother worritin’ her heart out!  So it’s into the wather ye were?”

I admitted it.

“Hannah?” I said softly.

“What then?”

“Does mother know—­about the boat?”

“Now don’t ye be wheedlin’.”

I managed to discover, however, that my mother did not know, and surmised that the best reason why she had not been told had to do with Hannah’s criminal acquiescence concerning the operations in the shed.  I ran into the front hall and up the stairs, and my mother heard me coming and met me on the landing.

“Hugh, where have you been?”

As I emerged from the semi-darkness of the stairway she caught sight of my dwindled garments, of the trousers well above my ankles.  Suddenly she had me in her arms and was kissing me passionately.  As she stood before me in her grey, belted skirt, the familiar red-and-white cameo at her throat, her heavy hair parted in the middle, in her eyes was an odd, appealing look which I know now was a sign of mother love struggling with a Presbyterian conscience.  Though she inherited that conscience, I have often thought she might have succeeded in casting it off—­or at least some of it—­had it not been for the fact that in spite of herself she worshipped its incarnation in the shape of my father.  Her voice trembled a little as she drew me to the sofa beside the window.

“Tell me about what happened, my son,” she said.