fact shortened her
scruples.

"It can't be really stealing, for I don't feel like a thief," was the
logic that settled it, and the next moment she had the novel sensation
of having both feet surreptitiously and feloniously on another person's
land. She decidedly did n't relish it, but she would go ahead now and
think of it afterward. She was pretty sure she never would do it again,
anyhow, experiencing that common sort of repentance beforehand for the
thing she was about to do, the precise moral value of which it would be
interesting to inquire. It ought to count for something, for, if it does
n't hinder the act, at least it spoils the fun of it. Here was a melon
at her feet; should she take it? That was a bigger one further on, and
her imperious conscientiousness compelled her to go ten steps further
into the enemy's country to get it, for now that she was committed to
the undertaking, she was bound to do the best she could.

To stoop, to break the vine, and to secure the melon were an instant's
work; but as she bent, the high corn before her waved violently and a
big farmer-looking man in a slouch hat and shocking old coat sprang out
and seized her by the arm, with a grip not painful but sickeningly firm,
exclaiming as he did so:--

"Wal, I swan ter gosh, if 't ain't a gal!"

Lina dropped the melon, and, barely recalling the peculiar circumstances
in time to suppress a scream, made a silent, desperate effort to break
away. But her captor's hold was not even shaken, and he laughed at the
impotence of her attempt. In all her petted life she had never been held
a moment against her will, and it needed not the added considerations
that this man was a coarse, unknown boor, the place retired, the time
midnight, and herself in the position of a criminal, to give her a
feeling of abject terror so great as to amount to positive nausea, as
she realized her utter powerlessness in his hands.

"So you've been a-stealin' my melons, hey?" he demanded gruffly.

The slight shake with which the question was enforced deprived her of
the last vestige of dignity and self-assertion. She relapsed into the
mental condition of a juvenile culprit undergoing correction. Now that
she was caught, she no longer thought of her offense as venial. The
grasp of her captor seemed to put an end to all possible hairsplitting
on that point, and prove that it was nothing more nor less than
stealing, and a sense of guilt left her without any moral sup