His Majesty Baby and Some Common People
very poor taste, and would have been willing to laugh at it along with Harris, was furious that he should have been supposed guilty of such a breach of friendship. So, being a Celt, who acts by impulse rather than by reason, he told Harris in the Common Hall that, if he supposed that he had written the sheet, he was at liberty to do so, and need not expect either a denial or an apology. 

 They never spoke again, nor met except in a public place, and when Carmichael was ordained minister in the Glen, Harris joined a mission settlement in one of the lowest quarters of a southern city. 

 From time to time Carmichael read greedily of his heroic service, and the power which he was acquiring—for he had never been haughty with poor people, but ever with them most gentle and humble. Again and again it had been laid on Carmichael to write to his old friend, and express regret for his pride, and assure him of his innocence in the matter of the squib, but he thought that Harris ought first to write to him, and then, if he did, Carmichael meant to telegraph, and invite his friend to come up to the Glen, where they would renew the fellowship of former days. But Harris gave no sign, and Carmichael had no need to telegraph. 

 Carmichael rose from his knees, and opened a drawer in his writing-table, and from below a mass of college papers took out a photograph. The firelight was enough to show the features, and memory did the rest. They had once shared rooms together, and a more considerate chum no man could have. They had gone on more than one walking tour together, and never once had Harris lost his temper; they had done work together in a mission school, and on occasion Harris had been ready to do Carmichael's as well as his own; they had also prayed together, and there was no pride in Harris when he prayed. 

 What were his faults, after all? A certain fastidiousness of intellect, and an unfortunate mannerism, and a very innocent form of self-approbation, and an instinctive shrinking from rough-mannered men—nothing more. There was in him no impurity, nor selfishness, nor meanness, nor trickiness, nor jealousy, nor evil temper. And this was the man—his friend also—to whom he had refused to give the satisfaction of an explanation, and whom he had made to suffer bitterly during his last college term. And just because Harris was of porcelain ware, and not common delf, would he suffer the more. 

 He had refused to forgive this man his trespass, which was his first transgression against him, and now that he thought of it, hardly to be 
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