said Bonaparte,
grinning into the boy's face. Then, feeling that he had fallen from that
high gravity which was as spice to the pudding, and the flavour of the
whole little tragedy, he drew himself up. "Waldo," he said, "confess to
me instantly, and without reserve, that you ate the peaches."

The boy's face was white now. His eyes were on the ground, his hands
doggedly clasped before him.

"What, do you not intend to answer?"

The boy looked up at them once from under his bent eyebrows, and then
looked down again.

"The creature looks as if all the devils in hell were in it," cried Tant
Sannie. "Say you took them, boy. Young things will be young things; I
was older than you when I used to eat bultong in my mother's loft, and
get the little niggers whipped for it. Say you took them."

But the boy said nothing.

"I think a little solitary confinement might perhaps be beneficial,"
said Bonaparte. "It will enable you, Waldo, to reflect on the enormity
of the sin you have committed against our Father in heaven. And you may
also think of the submission you owe to those who are older and wiser
than you are, and whose duty it is to check and correct you."

Saying this, Bonaparte stood up and took down the key of the fuel-house,
which hung on a nail against the wall.

"Walk on, my boy," said Bonaparte, pointing to the door; and as he
followed him out he drew his mouth expressively on one side, and made
the lash of the little horsewhip stick out of his pocket and shake up
and down.

Tant Sannie felt half sorry for the lad; but she could not help
laughing, it was always so funny when one was going to have a whipping,
and it would do him good. Anyhow, he would forget all about it when the
places were healed. Had not she been beaten many times and been all the
better for it?

Bonaparte took up a lighted candle that had been left burning on the
kitchen table, and told the boy to walk before him. They went to the
fuel-house. It was a little stone erection that jutted out from the side
of the wagon-house. It was low and without a window, and the dried dung
was piled in one corner, and the coffee-mill stood in another, fastened
on the top of a short post about three feet high. Bonaparte took the
padlock off the rough door.

"Walk in, my lad," he said.

Waldo obeyed sullenly; one place to him was much the same as another. He
had no objection to being locked up.

Bonaparte followed him in, and closed the door carefully.