the farm kitchen and had a glorious tuck in, and
were afterwards turned loose among the strawberries, while the farmer
watched them with keen delight and a remembrance of past days. Whose
place in heaven for such deeds of charity is already secure.

The authorities at home were not so lenient, and the experienced truant
was careful, when he could, to time his arrival home about five o'clock
in the afternoon, which allowed for the school hours and one hour more
of special confinement. According to the truant's code he was not
allowed to tell a lie about his escapade, either at home or at school,
but he was not obliged to offer a full and detailed statement of the
truth. If his father charged him with being kept in at school for not
having done his work, and rebuked him for his laziness, he allowed it to
go at that, and did not accuse his father of inaccuracy. When, however,
a boy was by habit and repute a truant, his father learned by experience
and was apt to watch him narrowly. If the boy had an extra touch of the
sun on his face, and his clothing was disorderly beyond usual, and his
manner was especially unobtrusive, and his anxiety to please every
person quite remarkable, and if in moments of unconsciousness he seemed
to be chewing the cud of some recent pleasure, the father was apt to
subject him to a searching cross-examination. And his mother had to beg
the boy off with many a plea, such as mothers know how to use; and if
the others did not succeed, and the appeal to the heart was in vain, she
could always send the good man back upon his memory, and put it to his
conscience whether he ought to visit too severely upon his son the sin
the boy had inherited from himself.

It was next morning that the truant really paid for his pleasure; and
the price was sharp, for there was no caning to be compared with that
which followed a day in the country. It was a point of honour that no
boy should show distress; but even veterans bit their lips as the cane
fell first on the right hand and then on the left, and right across the
palm, and sometimes doubling on the back of the hand, if the cane was
young and flexible. Speug, though a man of war and able to endure
anything, used to warm his hands at the fire, if the weather was cold,
before going in to the inquisition, and after he had received a
switching of the first order he would go down to the lade and cool his
hands in the running water. It was an interesting spectacle to s