said her aunt quietly, "go to your room at once. On your own
confession you have done wickedly, and must be punished."

"Very well, Aunt Hannah."

"I must attend to Calvin first; but I will come to you by and by.
Until then you are not to leave your room. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Aunt Hannah."

She turned and walked towards the house.

"And now," said Mrs. Purchase, after a glance at Mr. Sam's face,
"let's see what bones are broken."

She bent over Calvin, but looked up almost immediately, as Mr. Sam uttered
a sharp exclamation.

"What's this?" he asked, stooping to pick up a briar pipe.

Master Calvin blinked, and turned his head aside from Mrs. Purchase's
curious gaze.

"I think it belongs to Tom Trevarthen," he mumbled.

"How on the airth did Tom Trevarthen come to drop a pipe here, and walk
off 'ithout troubling to pick it up? If 'twas a hairpin, now," said Mrs.
Purchase, not very lucidly, "one could understand it."

"I--I'm going to be ill," wailed the wretched Calvin, with a spasmodic
heave of the shoulders.

"Well," his aunt commented grimly after a moment, "you told the truth that
time, anyway."

Having conveyed him to the house and put him, with Susannah's help, to
bed, Aunt Hannah went off to Myra's room, but descended after a few
minutes in search of Mr. Sam, whom she found pacing the garden walk.

"Well?" he asked.

"I've told her the punishment--bread and water, and to keep her room all
day. She says nothing against it, and I think she's sorry about the
powder; but I can get no sense into her until her mind's set at rest about
Clem."

"What about him?"

"Why, the poor child's left behind at the school."

"Is that all? Miss Marvin will bring him home, no doubt."

"So I told her. But it seems she don't trust Miss Marvin--hates her, in
fact."

"The child must be crazed."

"Couldn't you send Peter Benny?"

"Oh, certainly, if you wish it." Mr. Sam went indoors to the
counting-house, where Mr. Benny jumped up from his desk in alarm at sight
of the bandages.

"Mercy on us, sir--you have met with an accident?"

"A trifle. Are you busy just now?"

Mr. Benny blushed. "I might answer in your words sir--a trifle.
Indeed, I hope, sir, you will not think it a liberty; but the late Mr.
Rosewarne used very kindly to allow it when no business happened to be
doing."

His employer stared at him blankly.

"On birthdays and such occasions," pursued Mr. Benny. "And by the way,