ess not! What have we got
to do?"

"Finish cutting the corn, and get in the pumpkins before there comes
frost enough to hurt them."

"Well, come along!" said Jimmy. "Let's get it over. I'm going to begin
fishing for that Bass the morning after the first black frost, if I do
go alone. I mean it!"

"But ye said--" began Dannie.

"Hagginy!" cried Jimmy. "What a lot of time you've wasted if you've
been kaping account of all the things I've said. Haven't you learned by
this time that I lie twice to the truth once?"

Dannie laughed. "Dinna say such things, Jimmy. I hate to hear ye. Of
course, I know about the fifty coons of the Canoper, and things like
that; honest, I dinna believe ye can help it. But na man need lie about
a serious matter, and when he knows he is deceiving another who trusts
him." Jimmy became so white that he felt the color receding, and turned
to hide his face. "Of course, about those fifty coons noo, what was the
harm in that? Nobody believed it. That wasna deceiving any ane."

"Yes, but it was," answered Jimmy. "The Boston man belaved it, and I
guiss he hasn't forgiven me, if he did take my hand, and drink with me.
You know I haven't had a word from him about that coon skin. I worked
awful hard on that skin. Some way, I tried to make it say to him again
that I was sorry for that night's work. Sometimes I am afraid I killed
the fellow."

"O-ho!" scoffed Dannie. "Men ain't so easy killed. I been thinkin'
about it, too, and I'll tell ye what I think. I think he goes on long
trips, and only gets home every four or five months. The package would
have to wait. His folks wouldna try to send it after him. He was a
monly fellow, all richt, and ye will hear fra him yet."

"I'd like to," said Jimmy, absently, beating across his palm a spray of
goldenrod he had broken. "Just a line to tell me that he don't bear
malice."

"Ye will get it," said Dannie. "Have a little patience. But that's your
greatest fault, Jimmy. Ye never did have ony patience."

"For God's sake, don't begin on me faults again," snapped Jimmy. "I
reckon I know me faults about as well as the nixt fellow. I'm so domn
full of faults that I've thought a lot lately about fillin' up, and
takin' a sleep on the railroad."

A new fear wrung Dannie's soul. "Ye never would, Jimmy," he implored.

"Sure not!" cried Jimmy. "I'm no good Catholic livin', but if it come
to dyin', bedad I niver could face it without first confissin' to the
praste, an