ate to have him pitch into you."

"How do you know he isn't right?" asked Dan, turning his face away.

"What, about the money?" cried Nat, looking up with a startled air.

"Yes."

"But I don't believe it! You don't care for money; all you want is your
old bugs and things," and Nat laughed, incredulously.

"I want a butterfly net as much as you want a fiddle; why shouldn't I
steal the money for it as much as you?" said Dan, still turning away,
and busily punching holes in the turf with his stick.

"I don't think you would. You like to fight and knock folks round
sometimes, but you don't lie, and I don't believe you'd steal," and Nat
shook his head decidedly.

"I've done both. I used to fib like fury; it's too much trouble now; and
I stole things to eat out of gardens when I ran away from Page, so you
see I am a bad lot," said Dan, speaking in the rough, reckless way which
he had been learning to drop lately.

"O Dan! don't say it's you! I'd rather have it any of the other boys,"
cried Nat, in such a distressed tone that Dan looked pleased, and showed
that he did, by turning round with a queer expression in his face,
though he only answered,

"I won't say any thing about it. But don't you fret, and we'll pull
through somehow, see if we don't."

Something in his face and manner gave Nat a new idea; and he said,
pressing his hands together, in the eagerness of his appeal,

"I think you know who did it. If you do, beg him to tell, Dan. It's so
hard to have 'em all hate me for nothing. I don't think I can bear it
much longer. If I had any place to go to, I'd run away, though I love
Plumfield dearly; but I'm not brave and big like you, so I must stay and
wait till some one shows them that I haven't lied."

As he spoke, Nat looked so broken and despairing, that Dan could not
bear it, and, muttered huskily,

"You won't wait long," and he walked rapidly away, and was seen no more
for hours.

"What is the matter with Dan?" asked the boys of one another several
times during the Sunday that followed a week which seemed as if it would
never end. Dan was often moody, but that day he was so sober and silent
that no one could get any thing out of him. When they walked he strayed
away from the rest, and came home late. He took no part in the evening
conversation, but sat in the shadow, so busy with his own thoughts that
he scarcely seemed to hear what was going on. When Mrs. Jo showed him an
unusually good report in the