Poor Janey was feeling very blue indeed. During the last week it seemed to her that Paul had somehow grown so different—rather inclined to be cross and uncommunicative, and even to avoid her company. That very afternoon he had told her please not to bother him while he was painting, or he never would get his picture done, and twice when she had offered to take a walk with him, he had refused her company with no very gracious excuse.

Thus ignored and rebuffed, she had sadly devoted herself to deeds of charity, and on that sultry afternoon sat with Carl reading aloud to him from a fat dull book about the ancient Britons. They were sitting in the little garden, where the shadow of the house offered some protection from the sun; Carl reposing like a Sultan in his easy chair, gazing up at the motionless weathervane on the gable of the attic, and occasionally begging Jane “not to mumble her words.” The attic was on the third floor just above Granny’s room, in a part of the house that formed an ell, bounding the garden on the south side with its ivy-covered wall.

“I say, Jane, do you suppose that Paul is smoking?” said Carl suddenly, interrupting the monotonous flow of Jane’s reading.

“What?”

“Well, that’s smoke, isn’t it? coming out of the attic window—and cigar smoke, too, or I’ll eat my hat!”

Jane looked up. It was an undeniable fact that a blue spiral issued from the attic, and, caught by the faint breeze, was wafted gracefully upwards, and dissolved. A very faint scent drifted down to the garden, and that scent—if such it could be called—was of tobacco. Paul, happily ignorant of the dismayed interest he had roused in the garden below, was sampling a cigar that Jeff had lavishly bestowed on him.

“Well, all I’ve got to say is that if he knows what is good for him, he’ll cut that out,” observed Carl drily.

“I guess—I guess he’s just doing it for fun,” said Jane.

“He won’t think it fun if father catches him. But it’s none of my business, I suppose. Go on.”

Jane went on reading, furtively glancing aloft every now and then to see if the tell-tale puffs of smoke were still issuing from the open window. To her intense relief they had stopped after a few minutes, and presently she heard Paul talking to her mother in the kitchen.

“Do you really like this book?” she asked at last, looking at her brother pathetically.

“Very much. But you needn’t read any more if you’re tired. Here’s Elise, now, anyway.”

Elise had just entered by the garden gate.

“Carl! Jane! What do you think! The most exciting thing—”

“Lily Deacon is engaged to Mr. Sheridan,” said Jane promptly. Elise stared at her, her round blue eyes wide with amazement.

“How did you know?”

“I put two and two together. Aren’t I clever?”

“No, how did you guess, Janey? Lily hasn’t told anyone but me.”

“Well, I knew it was going to happen, and I knew that you’d been up to see Lily this afternoon, and I guessed the rest. Isn’t it nice, though!” cried Jane, clapping her hands. “And you know I’m really responsible for it.”

“You!” hooted Carl derisively.

“Yes, me. When did it happen, Elise, and when are they going to be married? I do so love a wedding, and there hasn’t been one here for ages. Do you suppose she’ll wear a veil?”

Elise, who under her placid exterior had the most romantic of souls, sat down to recount all the details that she had gleaned from her best friend.

“And she’s going to live in that lovely house, and she’ll travel, and she—goodness, do you suppose Paul has burned up another batch of cakes?” she broke off short in her rhapsody over Lily’s prospects to sniff the air.

“Don’t you smell smoke? I do hope he hasn’t had another disaster—he’s been getting along so well. Well, anyway—where was I?”

“You said she was going to travel. What I want to know is when the wedding is going to be,” said Jane.

“Oh, that isn’t decided yet—in the spring, I think. You know, that doesn’t smell like cake burning. It smells like rags. I suppose somebody’s burning trash.”

Carl laughed and looked at Jane; but the burning smell did not resemble tobacco at all, and besides, Paul was still in the kitchen with Aunt Gertrude.

“Go on and tell some more, Elise,” said Jane.

“I’ve told you all I know. I must get you your milk, Carl.”

A minute later Elise reappeared at the dining room door, bearing a tray well stocked with milk and cookies, and followed by Paul and Aunt Gertrude.

“Dear me, who can be burning rubbish?” exclaimed Mrs. Lambert. “Don’t you smell smoke, children?”

“I do, I can tell you,” said Carl. “By Jove, Paul, what’s going on up in your den?”

Everyone looked up in consternation to the attic window. Paul had closed it before he came down, but smoke was coming slowly from under the pane.

“Good heavens! It couldn’t be on fire!” cried Elise. “Run, Paul! Run, quickly!”

But Paul had not waited to be urged. Up the stairs he was flying, as fast as his long legs could carry him, followed by Jane, Elise and poor Aunt Gertrude, whose only thought was for Granny, the twins having gone out to play early in the afternoon.

The smoke was already thick on the second floor.

“Elise, you and Aunt Gertrude take Granny downstairs,” ordered Paul. “Jane, you’d better not come up.”

“I’ll get a bucket of water. Oh, Paul! Your picture!”

“Never mind my picture—get the water quick!” And Paul dashed on up the stairs.

With his heart in his boots, he made his way to the attic, trying to hold his breath so that he would not swallow the smoke.

It turned out that so far as danger was concerned there was no great cause for excitement. Although the attic was dense with smoke, the cause of it was only a small blaze in the heap of rags near the window, which subsided under two bucketfuls of water.

Jane, whom Paul had not allowed to come up, waited for news at the foot of the stairs; but after he had informed her that the fire was out, she heard nothing more from him. After a few moments she shouted,

“Paul! Are you all right?”

“Oh, I’m all right,” replied a muffled voice, in a tone of the utmost despair.

“Well, come on down, or you’ll smother. What’s happened?”

“I’ll be down in a second,” and then through the fog Paul appeared slowly, descending the stairs carrying a square of canvas.

“Is it hurt?” asked Jane, fearfully. “Oh, Paul!”

“I don’t know. I can’t see it properly yet.” But his face showed that he expected the worst Neither of them spoke a word until they reached the garden again, where Aunt Gertrude pounced upon Jane.

“Oh, child, how you frightened me! Paul, are you quite sure everything’s all right? Oh, how did it start—was there really a blaze?”

“Just a little one—it’s all out—a few rags. I pitched ’em all out of the window. I’m—sorry, Aunt Gertrude.”

“Oh, my poor boy—your picture!”

“What’s the matter? Is it ruined?” asked Carl. Jane said nothing, but stood looking first at her cousin’s face, and then at the smoke-begrimed and blistered canvas on which there was hardly a semblance of the picture that had been so nearly completed.

“Yes,” said Paul, with the calmness of despair, “it’s ruined. It’s ruined all right.”

No one knew what to say, and a silence followed, until Elise asked timidly if he didn’t have time to do another.

“In four days? This is the twenty-seventh. No, cousin, I couldn’t—and besides, even if I could, I haven’t anything to do it with. So I guess that’s all there is to that.” He tried to sound cheerful, and turning the picture against the wall of the house, announced that he was going back to the attic to see if everything was calm up there.

“Well, that’s pretty hard luck,” remarked Carl. “I daresay he’s more broken up than he lets on.”

Jane had begun to cry, hiding her face in Granny’s lap. Not even Paul could have been as cruelly disappointed as she.

“Oh, he would have won something! I’m sure he would have!” she wept, disconsolately. “He said he didn’t think so, but he did, and I know he did.”

“Well, one way or the other, it’s his affair,” said Carl, “and I certainly don’t see why you should be in such a stew over it.”

“It is my affair, too,” wailed Jane, and at this characteristic remark no one could help smiling.

“Come, Janey, darling, there’s no use in taking it so to heart,” said Mrs. Lambert, laying her hand softly on the curly head. “We are all dreadfully distressed about Paul, but he has taken his misfortune bravely, and after all he will have many more chances. Elise, isn’t that the bell in the bakeshop? Dear me, what can people think coming in to all that smoke. I wonder if it’s clearing out at all. Come now, Janey, cheer up.”

Janey lifted her face from Granny’s knees, and wiped her wet cheeks with the palms of her hands, leaving long smudges.

“There now. We must all be thankful that there was no worse harm done,” said her mother, kissing her. “Come along, Elise. You come with me too, Janey. We mustn’t keep anyone waiting.”

But Paul was already in the bakeshop, and was calmly counting out change to the customer when his aunt came in. He was rather pale, but apparently quite cheerful.

“I looked around in the attic again, Aunt Gertrude. It’s all right up there,” he said calmly, when the customer had gone. “The floor is charred a bit where the rags were—but that’s all the damage. And the smoke’s clearing out. It didn’t get into the rooms much, because all the doors were closed.”

“We’re all so distressed about your picture, my dear,” said Aunt Gertrude, laying her hands on his arm. “I know what disappointment you must feel—and you are a very plucky boy.”

Paul looked down at her, started to say something, and then abruptly left the shop.

“But how in the world could it have started?” wondered Aunt Gertrude, for the first time. “He surely couldn’t have had the oil-stove lighted in this weather, and it couldn’t have started by itself.”

But Elise had no theory to offer, and Jane was in tears again, so Aunt Gertrude carried her mystification out to the kitchen, to see whether Anna had returned with the groceries.

At six o’clock, Mr. Lambert returned to the bosom of a highly excited family, and, at the supper table, listened with a peculiarly austere expression to the incoherent accounts of the disaster. Presently, he held up his hand.

“Come, come! I cannot find the beginning or end of all this,” he said, and then bending his gaze on Paul, added, slowly and sternly, “there was a fire to-day in the attic—where you, Paul, have been—er—working. So much I understand. But what I do not understand is—how this fire started.”

There was a silence. Jane glanced at Carl, and Carl took a drink of water.

“We hear of such things as spontaneous combustion,” pursued Mr. Lambert, “but for anything of the sort to take place, there must be certain conditions. I do not imagine that such conditions could exist—in a pile of rags—under an open window. No,” said Mr. Lambert, shaking his head, “I must discard that theory.”

Again the unpleasant silence followed these remarks. Paul, who had eaten nothing, drummed nervously on the table.

“You were there, were you not? a short time before the fire started?” inquired Mr. Lambert. “Did you notice any—er—odor of burning?”

“Why, Paul was with me in the kitchen for quite a little while before any of us noticed anything, Peter,” Aunt Gertrude broke in innocently.

“Well,” said Mr. Lambert, shaking his head, but still keeping his eyes fixed immovably on his nephew’s face, “it is quite beyond my comprehension. How anything of the sort—”

At this point Paul suddenly interrupted.

“There isn’t anything so very queer about it, uncle,” he said coolly enough, at first, though once he had spoken his courage seemed to leave him a little. “I—I was smoking up there, and I suppose I threw a match—or maybe—”

“Ah-h-h!” said Mr. Lambert slowly. Then he pressed his lips together, and for a moment or two said nothing. At length he observed,

“There are one or two matters I should like to take up with you after supper, Paul. However, we won’t go into them just now.” And then he changed the subject with an abruptness that so far from drawing the thoughts of his family away from speculations upon what was in store for Paul, only made them more dismally foreboding. And when after supper the family showed a desire to disperse before the coming storm, Mr. Lambert solemnly asked them to remain while he asked Paul a few questions.

“Peter, don’t scold the poor boy to-night,” said Aunt Gertrude in a low voice. “He has—he is very much distressed and disappointed.”

“It is true that he brought his own punishment upon himself,” returned Mr. Lambert, “and I should, perhaps, overlook the matter of his smoking this time, although he knew quite as well as Carl that I have absolutely forbidden that. It is a far more serious matter that I have to speak of.”

And with this he turned to Paul, who had been trying to collect his thoughts. He was not ignorant of what the serious matter might be, but it seemed to him that his uncle was making a good deal more out of it than it was worth, and he had begun to wonder whether he had been guilty of some crime that so far he knew nothing of.

“I have heard to-day—from a source that I fear is only too reliable—certain reports concerning you, which in justice to you I must ask you to deny or confirm,” said Mr. Lambert.

“What are they, uncle?” asked Paul.

“I was told—and by one of my most respected fellow-citizens—that you have been seen not once, but at least half a dozen time of late with a young man of a most undesirable character and reputation—Jefferson Roberts. Could my informant have been mistaken? Have you or have you not seen this young man several times—recently?”

Paul swallowed. The entire family was aghast, for it was very plain that Mr. Lambert was deeply angered.

“Well?” said the old merchant. “Is this true?”

“Yes, uncle.”

“You knew what my feelings would be if I learned that this was true?”

“Yes, uncle.”

“Yes,” repeated Mr. Lambert, “I think you knew very well that you were disobeying my strictest injunctions. Just before Christmas you were—or could have been—seen with this notorious youth—a gambler, a rascal, a shameless loafer. When I learned of this, I pardoned you, thinking that you might not have known how deeply outraged I should feel at discovering that any member of my household should wish to associate with such a person. But now you have disobeyed me without such excuse. What am I to think? You give me no choice but to believe that you find pleasure in disobeying me, and mortifying me.”

After a pause, he went on,

“Yes, mortifying me. You have treated me as I have not deserved to be treated. I have given you a home, I have considered your welfare as attentively as I have considered the welfare of my own children; I have been lenient with you, though you would, perhaps, not be willing to admit as much—and in return I find you willing to—perhaps you are not aware that in associating with this Roberts and his crew you not only injure your own standing in this town, but injure me also. For more than a hundred years the family whose name you bear, and my own have stood for every principle of good citizenship; and that honorable reputation is to be marred through the willfulness of a youth who counts such a thing so lightly that he will toss it away for a few hours’ idle amusement!”

This grave, stern accusation was not what Paul had expected. He turned white and then blushed crimson. His vocal chords felt stiff, but at last he managed to speak.

“I—I didn’t think that Jeff Roberts was judged fairly, sir,” he stammered.

“Ah!”

“And what have I done that’s so terrible?” cried Paul, “I only—”

“You knew that you were disobeying me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Perhaps you think that at eighteen years of age you are a better judge of character than grey headed men and women? Perhaps you think that you are old enough to be your own master?” Mr. Lambert got up. “I cannot allow willful disobedience in my house. You have been guilty of it too often. I feel now that it would be best for all concerned—for you especially—to—let you be your own master. You are free now to go where you like, make friends with whom you will, direct your own life as you please.” He stopped. There was not a sound in the room—indeed no one quite realized that Mr. Lambert’s words actually constituted a dismissal.

“Your father,” continued the old man immovably, “left with me a small amount of money, which I shall turn over to you at once. It should be sufficient to maintain you until you are able to support yourself, and I am willing to add to it if necessary. I think—I believe that in the course of time experience will show you that I have been just with you, and if you show yourself worthy I shall always be ready to help you to the best of my ability.”

Aunt Gertrude looked pleadingly at her husband, but he did not see her. No one else had courage to say anything, and indeed to do so would have been worse than useless; for whether Mr. Lambert had judged his nephew too harshly or not, it was certain that he could not be made to look at the facts of the case in a different light. To him two things were of paramount importance,—obedience to his wishes, and respect for public opinion, and Paul had offended against both of these fundamental statutes. The old merchant had not exaggerated when he said that his nephew’s conduct had mortified him.

Paul made no attempt to defend himself; he was too much dazed by all that the day had brought forth to find a word to say.

Well, he was free. He should have been glad—and only a few months before he would have been. But looking helplessly around the table, from one face to the other he realized suddenly that he was not glad. Why, he had grown to love them all—he had even a certain fondness for Carl. Who was there now to care whether he got into scrapes or out of them, whether he won prizes or burnt his pictures to cinders, whether he was defeated or triumphant. But his face showed nothing of what was passing in his mind. Somewhere in the distance Mr. Lambert was saying,

“I wished for all of you to hear what I had to say to my nephew, so that you would understand that I judged him by nothing but what he himself admitted. And I believe, Gertrude, that when you have considered the matter as carefully as I have you will feel that I am doing only what is just, and, I hope, wise. Paul is not a child, but a young man, quite able to think for himself. It is plain that our ways and customs are disagreeable to him, and I have come to believe that it is only fair to him to let him go his own way as he thinks best. And—er—that is all.”

One by one the others rose from the table, and left the room. Only Paul and his uncle remained.

“Have I made myself quite clear?” asked Mr. Lambert, sitting down at his desk, and putting up the roll-top.

“Yes, uncle. I—when do you want me to—go?”

“That I leave entirely to your convenience,” returned Mr. Lambert. He opened a drawer and took out an envelope with a rubber band around it, which he gave to his nephew. “If you should find that this is not sufficient for your needs you may let me know. I am very sorry that you have forced this painful duty upon me—I had hoped that you—I still hope that you will realize—”

“My responsibilities,” said Paul absently. “Oh, I have—but never mind. I’m sorry, uncle. I didn’t understand—”

“Quite so. I want you to know that I am not acting with any thought of punishing you. I am doing only what I believe to be best.”

“Yes, sir.”

Mr. Lambert looked curiously at his nephew’s face, and saw that the contrition in it was sincere. He did not for a moment waver in his decision, but after a moment he held out his hand.

“I hope you do not harbor any hard feelings against me?”

Paul slowly and wonderingly took the proffered hand. His uncle’s cold, immovable justice was something that he had never been able to understand. Not for a moment did he dream of asking for pardon, but he could not “harbor any hard feelings” against the austere old man, who judged everything according to an inflexible standard of right and wrong—who saw all conduct as either black or white, and to whom the crime of disobedience was equally unpardonable whether it affected the routine of a little household or the affairs of a nation.