hilip's
face. (He said afterward, when all was settled, that he was ten times
more mortified to think that he had done such a thing in his father's
orchard.)

But Phil closed upon him, and kneading him with his knuckles in the
back, and with a trip, threw him heavily, falling prone upon him.
Reuben, in a frenzy, and with a torrent of much worse language than he
was in the habit of using, was struggling to turn him, when a sharp,
loud voice, which they both knew only too well, came down the
wind,--"Boys! boys!" and presently the Doctor comes up panting.

"What does this mean? Philip, I'm ashamed of you!" he continues; and
Philip rises.

Reuben, rising, too, the instant after, and with his fury unchecked,
dashes at Phil again; when the Doctor seizes him by the collar and drags
him aside.

"He struck me," says Phil.

"And he stole my apples and called me a liar," says Reuben, with the
tears starting, though he tries desperately to keep them back, seeing
that Phil shows no such evidence of emotion.

"Tut! tut!" says the Doctor,--"you are both too angry for a straight
story. Come with me."

And taking each by the hand, he led them through the garden and house,
directly into his study. There he opens a closet-door, with the sharp
order, "Step in here, Reuben, until I hear Philip's story." This Phil
tells straight-forwardly,--how he was passing through the orchard with a
pocketful of apples, which a neighbor's boy had given, and how Reuben
came upon him with swift accusation, and then the fight. "But he hurt me
more than I hurt him," says Phil, wiping his nose, which showed a little
ooze of blood.

"Good!" says the Doctor,--"I think you tell the truth."

"Thank you," says Phil,--"I know I do, Doctor."

Next Reuben is called out.

"Do you _know_ he took the apples?" asks the Doctor.

"Don't know," says Reuben,--"but he was by the place, and the stones
thrown down."

"And is that sufficient cause, Reuben, for accusing your friend?"

At which, Reuben, shifting his position uneasily from one foot to the
other, says,--

"I believe he did, though."

"Stop, Sir!" says the Doctor in a voice that makes Reuben sidle away.

"Here," says Phil, commiserating him in a grand way, and beginning to
discharge his pockets on the Doctor's table, "he may have them, if he
wants them."

Reuben stares at them a moment in astonishment, then breaks out with a
great tremor in his voice, but roundly enough,--

"By George! they'