So he put the tin cup to his lips and coughed and strangled over a single swallow of the fiery, nauseating stuff; did this for the girl's sake, and then rose and fled away down the mountain with his heart ablaze and a fearful clamor as of the judgment trumpet sounding in his ears.
For now the sleeping conscience was broad awake and plying its merciless dagger; now, indeed, he knew very well what he had done—what he had been doing since that fatal moment at the barrel-spring when he had fallen under the spell of Nan Bryerson's beauty; nay, back of that—how the up-bubbling of zeal had been nothing more than wounded vanity; the smoke of a vengeful fire of anger lighted by a desire to strike back at those who had laughed at him.
The next morning he came hollow-eyed to his breakfast, and when the chance offered, besought his father to give him one of the many boy's jobs in the iron plant during the summer vacation—asked and obtained.
And neither the hotel on the mountain top nor the hovel cabin under the second cliff saw him more the long summer through.
XIII
A SISTER OF CHARITY
It was just before the Christmas holidays, in his fourth year of the sectarian school, that Tom Gordon was expelled.
Writing to the Reverend Silas at the moment of Tom's dismissal, the principal could voice only his regret and disappointment. It was a most singular case. During his first and second years Thomas had set a high mark and had attained to it. On the spiritual side he had been somewhat non-committal, to be sure, but to offset this, he had been deeply interested in the preparatory theological studies, or at least he had appeared to be.