ittle shoes should be returned to Aunt
Keswick. It seems to me that justice to poor Aunt Patsy requires that
this should be done. Perhaps now she knows how wicked it was to steal
them."

"Yes," said Lawrence, "I think it would be well to put them back where
they belong; but how can you manage it?"

"If you will give them to me," said Annie, "I will go up to aunt's
room, now that she is away, and if she keeps the box in the same place
where it used to be, I'll slip them into it. I hate dreadfully to do
it, but I really feel that it is a duty."

When Lawrence, with some little difficulty, walked across the yard to
get the shoes from his trunk, Annie ran after him, and waited at the
office door. "You must not take a step more than necessary," she said,
"and so I won't make you come back to the house."

When Lawrence gave her the shoes, and her hand a little squeeze at the
same time, he told her that he should sit down immediately and write
his letter.

"And I," said Annie, "will go, and see what I can do with these."

With the shoes in her pocket, she went up stairs into her aunt's room,
and, after looking around hastily, as if to see that the old lady had
not left the ghost of herself in charge, she approached the closet in
which the sacred pasteboard box had always been kept. But the closet
was locked. Turning away she looked about the room. There was no other
place in which there was any probability that the box would be kept.
Then she became nervous; she fancied she heard the click of the yard
gate; she would not for anything have her aunt catch her in that room;
nor would she take the shoes away with her. Hastily placing them upon
a table she slipped out, and hurried into her own room.

It was about an hour after this, that Mrs Keswick came rapidly up the
steps of the front porch. She had been to Howlett's to carry a letter
which she had written to Miss March, and had there made arrangements
to have that letter taken to Midbranch very early the next morning.
She had wished to find some one who would start immediately, but as
there was no moon, and as the messenger would arrive after the family
were all in bed, she had been obliged to abandon this more energetic
line of action. But the letter would get there soon enough; and if it
did not bring down retribution on the head of the man who lodged in
her office, and who, she said to herself, had worked himself into her
plans, like the rot in a field of potatoes, s