a
little easier, but still very ill. His father came a few minutes
after his mother had gone. He heard him stamping in through the back
door; then his frost-reddened old face looked in on Ephraim.

"Mother gone?" said he.

"She's jest gone," replied Ephraim. His father came in. He looked at
the boy with a childish and anxious sweetness. "Don't you feel quite
as well as you did?" he inquired.

"Dunno as I do."

"Took your medicine reg'lar?"

Ephraim nodded.

"I guess it's good medicine," said Caleb; "it come real high; I guess
the doctor thought consid'ble of it. I'd take it reg'lar if I was
you. I thought you looked as if you didn't feel quite so well as
common when I come in."

Caleb took off his boots and tended the fire. Ephraim began to feel a
little better; his heart did not beat quite so laboriously.

He did not say a word to his father about paring the apples. Caleb
went into the pantry and came back eating a slice of mince-pie.

"I found there was a pie cut, and I thought mother wouldn't mind if I
took a leetle piece," he remarked, apologetically. He would never
have dared take the pie without permission had his wife been at home.
"She ain't goin' to be home till arter dinner-time, an' I began to
feel kinder gone," added Caleb. He stood by the fire, and munched the
pie with a relish slightly lessened by remorse. "Don't you want
nothin'" he asked of Ephraim. "Mebbe a little piece of pie wouldn't
hurt you none."

Caleb's ideas of hygienic food were primitive. He believed, as
innocently as if he had lived in Eden before the Prohibition, that
all food which he liked was good for him, and he applied his theory
to all mankind. He had deferred to Deborah's imperious will, but he
had never been able to understand why she would not allow Ephraim to
eat mince-pie or anything else which his soul loved and craved.

"No, guess I don't," Ephraim replied. He gazed moodily out of the
window. "Father," said he, suddenly.

"What say, sonny?"

"I eat some of that pie last night."

"Mother give it to you?"

"No; I clim up on the meal-bucket, an' got it in the night."

"You might have fell, an' then I dunno what mother'd ha' said to
you," said Caleb.

"An' I did somethin' else."

"What else did you do?"

"I went out a-coastin' after you an' her was asleep."

"You didn't, now?"

"Yes, I did."

"An' we didn't neither on us wake up?"

"You was a-snorin' the whole time."

"I don't s'pose you'd oughter