that for you. There's your fish-pole and your can."

Colonel Witham paused, and reluctantly put his hand in his trousers
pocket. With still greater reluctance, he drew forth a twenty-five cent
piece and tendered it to the boy.

"Here," he said, "it's a lot of money, but I won't say as you haven't
earned it."

To Colonel Witham's astonishment, however, the boy shook his head.

"I don't want any money," he said. "I wouldn't take it for that."

Another moment, he had slipped into shoes and stockings, snatched up his
pole and can, and was walking quickly down the road.

Little Tim had a conscience.

"Well, if that don't beat me!" exclaimed the amazed Colonel Witham, as
he stood staring at the boy. "Who'd ever have thought it?"

But soon a great light dawned upon him.

"Aha!" he exclaimed. "The little rascal! He stuck it up there, or my
name's not Witham. That's why he wouldn't take the money for getting it
down. Reckon I ought to have given him a taste of that stick, instead of
offering him a quarter."

But even Colonel Witham, when he came to think upon it, knew deep down
in his heart that he had a sort of admiration for Little Tim.

In the meantime, Henry Burns, turning over in his mind the secret that
had been partly revealed to him, through the words of Grannie Thornton,
could not make up his mind just what to do about it. He had almost
decided to entrust what he knew to Lawyer Estes, for him to unravel,
when the lawyer was called out of town for several weeks, on an
important case. Again, another event intervened to cause delay. Miss
Matilda Burns made a visit to her home in Massachusetts, and took Henry
Burns with her; and it was well into November, close upon Thanksgiving,
in fact, when they returned to Benton. By this time early winter had set
in, and some heavy snow falls had buried all the country around and
about Benton deep under drifts.

"You're just in time," said Harvey, as he and Tom Harris greeted Henry
Burns on the latter's return. "We've got a week's holiday, and look what
I've made for us."

Harvey proudly displayed a big toboggan, some seven feet in length, in
the making of which he had expended the surplus time and energy of the
last two weeks. "No easy job steaming those ends and making 'em curl up
together even," he added; "but she'll go some. Say, you ought to see the
slide we've got, down the mountain above Ellison's. Well go up this
afternoon, if you like."

They were up there, al