arty. They
decided to include all the available young people in Pembroke.

"We might jest as well while we're about it," said Hannah,
judiciously. "There are cherries enough, and the Lord only knows when
your father 'll have another freak like this. I guess it's like an
eclipse of the sun, an' won't come again very soon."

Within a day or two all the young people had been bidden to the
cherry party, and, as Mrs. Berry had foretold, accepted. Their
indignation was not proof against the prospect of pleasure; and,
moreover, they all liked Rose and William, and would not have refused
on their account.

The week before the party, when the cherries were beginning to turn
red, and the robins had found them out, was an arduous one to little
Ezra Ray, a young brother of Tommy Ray, who tended in Silas Berry's
store. He was hired for twopence to sit all day in the cherry orchard
and ring a cow-bell whenever the robins made excursions into the
trees. From earliest dawn when the birds were first astir, until they
sought their little nests, did Ezra sit uncomfortably upon a hard
peaked rock in the midst of the orchard and jingle his bell.

He was white-headed, and large of his age like his brother. His pale
blue eyes were gravely vacant under his thick white thatch; his chin
dropped; his mouth gaped with stolid patience. There was no
mitigation for his dull task; he was not allowed to keep his vigil on
a comfortable branch of a tree with the mossy trunk for a support to
his back, lest he might be tempted to eat of the cherries, and turn
pal of the robins instead of enemy. He dared not pull down any low
bough and have a surreptitious feast, for he understood well that
there were likely to be sharp eyes at the rear windows of the house,
that it was always probable that old Silas Berry, of whom he was in
mortal fear, might be standing at his back, and, moreover, he should
be questioned, and had not falsehood for refuge, for he was a good
child, and would be constrained to speak the truth.

They would not let him have a gun instead of a bell, although he
pleaded hard. Could he have sat there presenting a gun like a sentry
on duty, the week, in spite of discomfort and deprivations, would
have been full of glory and excitement. As it was, the dulness and
monotony of the jingling of the cow-bell made even his stupid
childish mind dismal. All the pleasant exhilaration of youth seemed
to have deserted the boy, and life to him became as