It was a terrible moment for me.  For my affections were still quiveringly alive in those days, and I loved her.  I had for an instant an instinctive impulse to tell her the whole story,—­South Sea Islands and all!  And I could have done it had I not beheld looming behind her another figure which represented a stern and unsympathetic Authority, and somehow made her, suddenly, of small account.  Not that she would have understood the romance, but she would have comprehended me.  I knew that she was powerless to save me from the wrath to come.  I wept.  It was because I hated to lie to her,—­yet I did so.  Fear gripped me, and—­like some respectable criminals I have since known—­I understood that any confession I made would inexorably be used against me....  I wonder whether she knew I was lying?  At any rate, the case appeared to be a grave one, and I was presently remanded to my room to be held over for trial....

Vividly, as I write, I recall the misery of the hours I have spent, while awaiting sentence, in the little chamber with the honeysuckle wall-paper and steel engravings of happy but dumpy children romping in the fields and groves.  On this particular March afternoon the weather had become morne, as the French say; and I looked down sadly into the grey back yard which the wind of the morning had strewn with chips from the Petrel.  At last, when shadows were gathering in the corners of the room, I heard footsteps.  Ella appeared, prim and virtuous, yet a little commiserating.  My father wished to see me, downstairs.  It was not the first time she had brought that summons, and always her manner was the same!

The scene of my trials was always the sitting room, lined with grim books in their walnut cases.  And my father sat, like a judge, behind the big desk where he did his work when at home.  Oh, the distance between us at such an hour!  I entered as delicately as Agag, and the expression in his eye seemed to convict me before I could open my mouth.

“Hugh,” he said, “your mother tells me that you have confessed to going, without permission, to Logan’s Pond, where you embarked on a raft and fell into the water.”

The slight emphasis he contrived to put on the word raft sent a colder shiver down my spine than the iced water had done.  What did he know? or was this mere suspicion?  Too late, now, at any rate, to plead guilty.

“It was a sort of a raft, sir,” I stammered.

“A sort of a raft,” repeated my father.  “Where, may I ask, did you find it?”

“I—­I didn’t exactly find it, sir.”

“Ah!” said my father. (It was the moment to glance meaningly at the jury.) The prisoner gulped.  “You didn’t exactly find it, then.  Will you kindly explain how you came by it?”

“Well, sir, we—­I—­put it together.”

“Have you any objection to stating, Hugh, in plain English, that you made it?”

“No, sir, I suppose you might say that I made it.”