drew it speculatively across his calloused
old thumb, while with his mild blue eyes, which his spectacles
enormously exaggerated, he fixed the humbled Willie.

"That's a good knife for the money," said that young man.
"Hand-forged."

"Sho now, ye don't say so," said Mr. Peaslee. "I guess ye give a
discount, don't ye? Farley always allows me a little suthin'."

"You can have it for twenty-one cents," said Willie, much irritated.
"Charge it?"

"Guess I better pay cash," Mr. Peaslee answered hastily. If it were
charged, his wife would question the item.

Producing an enormous wallet--very worn and very flat--from his
cavernous pocket, he deliberately searched until he found a
Canadian ten-cent piece, and adding to it enough to make up the
price, handed it to Potter, and left the store.

Mr. Peaslee, who remembered no gift from his father other than a
very occasional big copper cent, thought himself pretty generous.
Had he not spent pretty nearly the price of two dozen eggs?

But now a question occurred to him which he had not thought of
before. How was he to get the knife to Jim? A gift from him would
excite surprise, perhaps suspicion. It must not be known who had
sent it. Ah, there was the post office! Going in, he pushed the
little box through the barred window.

"Say, Cyrus," he said to the postmaster, "kinder weigh up this
consignment for me, will ye?"

The postmaster weighed the box.

"That will cost you six cents," he said.

"Thank ye," returned Mr. Peaslee, and dropping the box into his deep
pocket, departed. Half a dozen eggs more to get it to his next-door
neighbor!

"'T ain't right," he muttered, "'t ain't right."

Uncertain what to do with his gift, but feeling, on the whole,
pretty virtuous, Mr. Peaslee now started home. He thought that
Jim would not be going to school, but would wait at home for the
threatened coming of the constable; but still he was not sure,
and he wanted to keep the boy under his eye.

Suddenly he straightened. There was Judge Ames walking up the
street, valise in hand, just from the early morning train. He had
come a few days before the opening of court. Mr. Peaslee knew him
slightly, and stood much in awe of him. He was greatly pleased when
the judge stopped and shook hands with him.

"I am glad to hear, Mr. Peaslee," said the judge, in his precise,
lawyer-like utterance, "that you are to be on the grand jury. We
need men like you there."

"Thank ye, judge, thank