ed. "If
there's a bug or a moth that can stand that leetle dose of mine, I'll eat
the whole apple crop myself."

"Still, I'll feel better satisfied when Howard gets here, and gives an
expert opinion," Mr. Robbins rejoined. "He wrote he expected to be here
to-day without fail."

"Well, of course you're entitled to your opinion, Jerry," Mr. Weaver
replied doubtfully. "But I never did set any store at all by these here
government chaps with their little satchels and tree doctor books. I'd
just as soon walk up to an apple tree and hand it a blue pill or a shin
plaster."

Kit slid hastily down from the post as Mr. Hicks' black and white horse
turned in from the road.

"Hello," he called out, cheerily. "How be you, Jerry? Howdy, Philemon?
Miss Kit here tells me you've been harboring a fruit thief, and you've
caught him."

Kit's cheeks were bright red as she laid one hand on her father's
shoulder.

"Shad's got him right over in the corn-crib, Mr. Hicks. I haven't told
father yet, because it might worry him. It isn't anything at all, Dad,"
she added, hurriedly. "We girls have been keeping a watch on the berry
patch, you know, and to-day it was my turn to stand guard up in the
cupola. I just happened to see somebody over there after the berries, so I
told Shad to go and get him, and I called up Mr. Hicks."

Mr. Robbins shook his head with a little smile.

"I'm afraid Kit has been overzealous, Hannibal," he said. "I don't know
anything about this, but we'll go over to the corn-crib and find out what
it's all about."

Kit and Evie secured a good point of vantage up on the porch while the
others skirted around the garden over to the old corn-crib where Shad
stood sentinel duty.

"My, I like your place over here," Evie exclaimed, wistfully. "You've got
so many ornaments out-of-doors. Ma says she can't even grow a nasturtium
on our place without the hens scratching it up."

Kit nodded, but could not answer. Already she had what Cynthy Allen called
a "premonition" that all was not as it should be at the corn-crib. She saw
Shad stealthily and cautiously put back the wide wooden bars that held the
door, then Mr. Hicks, fully on the defensive with a stout hickory cane
held in readiness for any unseemly onslaught on the part of the culprit,
advanced into the corn-crib. Evie drew closer, her little freckled face
full of curiosity.

"Ain't Pop brave?" she whispered, "and he never made but two arrests
before in all his life.