whispering around under windows, for any good."

"Why, you don't suppose they were planning to steal, or rob, do you?" I
asked, much startled.

"Who knows," replied Addison, coolly. "Halse is a strange boy. He is
just rattle-headed and foolish enough to get coaxed into some scrape
that will disgrace him and all the rest of us. I never saw a fellow in
my life so lacking in good sense.

"Oh yes, I'll talk with Doad," continued Ad, somewhat impatiently. "Doad
is a good girl. She thinks moral suasion and generosity will do
everything. But if I had Halse to manage, I would put him under lock and
key, every night," said Addison, striking his hoe sharply into the
ground.

"And if we only let him alone, I guess he will get there, of his own
accord," he added with a fine irony.

I saw quite plainly that, as Theodora had once said to me, Addison had
no patience with Halstead and his but too evident weakness of character.

"I don't like to run to the Old Squire with all that I see and hear,"
Addison went on, in a low tone, for Gramp was hoeing only a few steps
behind us, and Halstead was now coming back from the pasture. "For they
all think now that I don't like Halse and that I am too hard on him. But
they will find out who is in the right about it."

After supper I saw Theodora in earnest conversation with Addison, out in
the garden by the bee-house. Doad was a great friend of the bees; if she
were wanted and not in the house, we generally looked first for her in
the garden, in the vicinity of the bee-house.

Later in the evening, after we had finished milking and were going into
the dairy with our pails, Addison said to me that it was best, he
thought, to say nothing to the old folks just yet. "Doad wants me to
watch to-night and, if Halse gets up to go off anywhere, to stop him and
coax him back to his room.

"It isn't a job I like," continued Addison, "but perhaps we had better
try it; Doad thinks so.

"So if you can keep awake, till ten or eleven, you had better," Addison
went on. "If he gets up to start off, ask him where he is going, and if
he really starts, come and call me, and we will go after him. I can
dress in a minute."

To this proposal I agreed, and I may add here that at about eleven
o'clock we surprised Halse in the act of stealing away to the Corners,
but after some parley and a scuffle with him, succeeded in getting him
back to bed, and I lodged with Addison.

It was but a short night thencefo