Logan's Pond, where you embarked on a raft and
fell into the water."

The slight emphasis he contrived to put on the word raft sent a colder
shiver down my spine than the iced water had done. What did he know? or
was this mere suspicion? Too late, now, at any rate, to plead guilty.

"It was a sort of a raft, sir," I stammered.

"A sort of a raft," repeated my father. "Where, may I ask, did you find
it?"

"I--I didn't exactly find it, sir."

"Ah!" said my father. (It was the moment to glance meaningly at the
jury.) The prisoner gulped. "You didn't exactly find it, then. Will you
kindly explain how you came by it?"

"Well, sir, we--I--put it together."

"Have you any objection to stating, Hugh, in plain English, that you
made it?"

"No, sir, I suppose you might say that I made it."

"Or that it was intended for a row-boat?"

Here was the time to appeal, to force a decision as to what constituted
a row-boat.

"Perhaps it might be called a row-boat, sir," I said abjectly.

"Or that, in direct opposition to my wishes and commands in forbidding
you to have a boat, to spend your money foolishly and wickedly on a
whim, you constructed one secretly in the woodshed, took out a part of
the back partition, thus destroying property that did, not belong
to you, and had the boat carted this morning to Logan's Pond?" I was
silent, utterly undone. Evidently he had specific information.... There
are certain expressions that are, at times, more than mere figures of
speech, and now my father's wrath seemed literally towering. It added
visibly to his stature.

"Hugh," he said, in a voice that penetrated to the very corners of my
soul, "I utterly fail to understand you. I cannot imagine how a son
of mine, a son of your mother who is the very soul of truthfulness and
honour--can be a liar." (Oh, the terrible emphasis he put on that word!)
"Nor is it as if this were a new tendency--I have punished you for it
before. Your mother and I have tried to do our duty by you, to instil
into you Christian teaching. But it seems wholly useless. I confess that
I am at a less how to proceed. You seem to have no conscience whatever,
no conception of what you owe to your parents and your God. You not only
persistently disregard my wishes and commands, but you have, for many
months, been leading a double life, facing me every day, while you were
secretly and continually disobeying me. I shudder to think where this
determination of yours to h