r with mine."

"Did you get more than three?"

"Got a-plenty."

"Jemmy Three, how many's a-plenty?"

"'Bout twenty-four."

Jemmy Three had got twenty-four! Judith turned away in bitterness and
envy, and afterwards suspicion.

There was nothing the matter with her traps. If Jem Three got
twenty-four lobsters in his, why did she get only three in hers?
Twenty-four and three. What kind of fairness was that! She could set
lobster-traps as well as any Jem Three--or Jem Four--or Five--or Six.

There had always been good-natured rivalry between the fisher-boy and
the fisher-girl, and Judith had usually held her own jubilantly.
There had never been any such difference as this.

Suddenly was born the evil thought in Judith's brain. It crept in
slinkingly, after the way of evil things. "How do you know but he
helped himself out o' your traps?" That was the whisper it whispered
to Judith. Then, well started, how it ran on! "When you and he
quarreled a while ago, didn't he say, 'I'll pay you back'?--didn't he?
You think if he didn't."

"Oh, he did," groaned Judith.

"Well, isn't helping himself to your lobsters paying you back?"

"Yes--oh, yes, if he _did_. But Jemmy Three never--"

"How do you know he never? Is twenty-four to three a fair average? Is
it? Is it?"

"No, oh, no! But I don't believe--"

"Oh, you needn't believe! _Don't_ believe. Go right on finding your
traps empty and believing Jemmy Three'd never! I thought you were
going to save your lobster-money for Blossom."

"Oh, I was--I am going to! I'm going to save it to take her across the
ocean to that doctor. It was going to be a little wheel-chair, but
now it's going to be _legs_."

"But supposing there isn't any lobster-money? You can't do much with
three lobsters a day. If somebody helps himself--"

"Stop!" cried Judith angrily, and the evil thought slunk away. But it
came again--it kept coming. One by one, little trivial circumstances
built themselves into suspicions, until the little brown freckles on
Jemmy Three's face came to spell "Dishonesty" to Judith Lynn. If it
had not been for the terrible need of lobster-money--Judith would have
fought harder against the evil thing if it had not been for that.

"I've got to have it! There's got to be lobsters in the traps!" she
cried to herself. "The doctor over there might die! If he died before
I could carry Blossom to him, do you think I'd ever forgive Jemmy
Three?"--which showed that the Evil Thi