a good Providence for it; but this failing of hers was no excuse
for Giles. The covetousness of this thief had for once got the better
of his caution; the tree was too completely stripped, though the
youngest boy Dick did beg hard that his father would leave the poor
old woman enough for a few dumplings; and when Giles ordered Dick in
his turn to shake the tree, the boy did it so gently that hardly any
apples fell, for which he got a good stroke of the stick with which
the old man was beating down the apples.

The neighbors, on their return from church, stopped as usual; but it
was--not, alas, to admire the apples, for apples there were none left,
but to lament the robbery, and console the widow. Meantime the
redstreaks were safely lodged in Giles' hovel, under a few bundles of
hay, which he had contrived to pull from the farmer's mow the night
before, for the use of his jackasses.

Such a stir, however, began to be made about the widow's apple-tree,
that Giles, who knew how much his character laid him open to
suspicion, as soon as he saw the people safe in church again in the
afternoon, ordered his boys to carry each a hatful of the apples, and
thrust them in at a little casement window, which happened to be open
in the house of Samuel Price, a very honest carpenter in that parish,
who was at church with his whole family. Giles' plan, by this
contrivance, was to lay the theft on Price's sons, in case the thing
should come to be further inquired into. Here Dick put in a word, and
begged and prayed his father not to force them to carry the apples to
Price's. But all that he got by his begging was such a knock as had
nearly laid him on the earth.

"What, you cowardly rascal," said Giles, "you will go and _peach_, I
suppose, and get your father sent to jail."

Poor widow Brown, though her trouble had made her still weaker than
she was, went to church again in the afternoon; indeed, she rightly
thought that her being in trouble was a new reason why she ought to
go. During the service she tried with all her might not to think of
her redstreaks; and whenever they would come into her head, she took
up her prayer-book directly, and so she forgot them a little; and,
indeed, she found herself much easier when she came out of the church
than when she went in--an effect so commonly produced by prayer, that
methinks it is a pity people do not try it oftener.

Now it happened oddly enough, that on that Sunday, of all the Sunday