ently obliged
to change a tire in a CREPE DE CHINE petticoat, et cetera.

I yeilded to the temptation. How could I know that I was sewing my own
destruction?

IV

Let us, dear reader, pass with brevaty over the next few days. Even to
write them is a repugnent task, for having set my hand to the Plow, I am
not one to do things half way and then stop.

Every day the Stranger came and gave me to dollars and I took him to
the back road on our place and left him there. And every night, although
weary unto death with washing the car, carrying people, changeing tires
and picking nails out of the road which the hackman put there to make
trouble, I but pretended to slumber, and instead sat up in the library
and kept my terrable Vigil. For now I knew that he had dishonest designs
on the sacred interior of my home, and was but biding his time.

The house having been closed for a long time, there were mice
everywhere, so that I sat on a table with my feet up.

I got so that I fell asleep almost anywhere but particularly at meals,
and mother called in a doctor. He said I needed exercise! Ye gods!

Now I think this: if I were going to rob a house, or comit any sort
of Crime, I should do it and get it over, and not hang around for days
making up my mind. Besides keeping every one tence with anxiety. It is
like diving off a diving board for the first time. The longer you stand
there, the more afraid you get, and the farther (further?) it seems to
the water.

At last, feeling I could stand no more, I said this to the Stranger as
he was paying me. He was so surprized that he dropped a quarter in the
road, and did not pick it up. I went back for it later but some one else
had found it.

"Oh!" he said. "And all this time I've been beleiving that you--well, no
matter. So you think it's a mistake to delay to long?"

"I think when one has somthing Right or Wrong to do, and that's for your
conscience to decide, it's easier to do it quickly."

"I see," he said, in a thoughtfull manner. "Well, perhaps you are right.
Although I'm afraid you've been getting one fifty cents you didn't
earn."

"I have never hung around," I retorted. "And no Archibald is ever a
sneak."

"Archibald!" he said, getting very red. "Why, then you are----"

"It doesn't matter who I am," I said, and got into the car and went
away very fast, because I saw I had made a dreadfull Slip and probably
spoiled everything. It was not untill I was putting the car