took it out of Henry. There is
always compensation for such as are unjustly used. I often took it out
of him--sometimes as an advance payment for something which I hadn't yet
done. These were occasions when the opportunity was too strong a
temptation, and I had to draw on the future. I did not need to copy this
idea from my mother, and probably didn't. Still she wrought upon that
principle upon occasion.

If the incident of the broken sugar-bowl is in "Tom Sawyer"--I don't
remember whether it is or not--that is an example of it. Henry never
stole sugar. He took it openly from the bowl. His mother knew he
wouldn't take sugar when she wasn't looking, but she had her doubts
about me. Not exactly doubts, either. She knew very well I _would._ One
day when she was not present, Henry took sugar from her prized and
precious old English sugar-bowl, which was an heirloom in the
family--and he managed to break the bowl. It was the first time I had
ever had a chance to tell anything on him, and I was inexpressibly glad.
I told him I was going to tell on him, but he was not disturbed. When my
mother came in and saw the bowl lying on the floor in fragments, she was
speechless for a minute. I allowed that silence to work; I judged it
would increase the effect. I was waiting for her to ask "Who did
that?"--so that I could fetch out my news. But it was an error of
calculation. When she got through with her silence she didn't ask
anything about it--she merely gave me a crack on the skull with her
thimble that I felt all the way down to my heels. Then I broke out with
my injured innocence, expecting to make her very sorry that she had
punished the wrong one. I expected her to do something remorseful and
pathetic. I told her that I was not the one--it was Henry. But there was
no upheaval. She said, without emotion, "It's all right. It isn't any
matter. You deserve it for something you've done that I didn't know
about; and if you haven't done it, why then you deserve it for something
that you are going to do, that I sha'n't hear about."

There was a stairway outside the house, which led up to the rear part of
the second story. One day Henry was sent on an errand, and he took a tin
bucket along. I knew he would have to ascend those stairs, so I went up
and locked the door on the inside, and came down into the garden, which
had been newly ploughed and was rich in choice firm clods of black mold.
I gathered a generous equipment of these, and