fourpence would go into the money-drawer and go out again, like any other fourpence, and be just as good as a real one, so long as nobody knew the difference. He was surprised that Old Man Leighton had at once seen that it was not a real fourpence; and that made him think that, after all, it was not right to give a man a piece of tin instead of a piece of silver. But his small mind was wildly confused, and he could not reason out why he had done wrong, although there was something bitter and biting inside of him that told him that he was a wicked, wicked scamp. So he went home, heavy-hearted and almost crying; but, although he was only seven years old, he did not cry very easily, and he choked back the sobs that welled up in his throat as he drew unwillingly near home.

It was early twilight in the short March day when he entered by the back gate, and, avoiding the house, crept into the barn and hid himself miserably in the haymow. In that chilly solitude, listening to the stamping and the champing of the cows and horses, so regardless of his sorrows, he gave way to his feelings and shed bitter, burning tears. The vastness of his offence slowly rose before him like an enormous giant ogre, and, as the darkness came on and the cold grew more piercing through the hay into which he had burrowed, he remembered all the stories of giants and ogres, ghosts and hobgoblins, that he had ever

heard.

Whatever was in store for him in the house could not be so bad as the cold, darkness, and loneliness of the barn. Besides, it must be remembered, Lem, although no longer The Baby, nor yet Lemmie, was still the youngest of the family; and his elder brothers and sisters were wont to say of him, "If I was his age, I should get whipped for that; and his mother, hiding a smile, would make no reply. So he slowly climbed down the haymow.

Listening at the outer door of the kitchen, Lem heard his father, who had just returned from the shipyard, telling Lem's mother, with many laughs between, that Old Man Leighton, who was a chum of Master Parker, had told how Lem and Bill Twyford had tried to buy a cocoanut with a tin fourpence.

"Of course,' said Old Man Leighton, Lem is too small to know what he was about; but that Twyford boy is a regular limb, and he put Lem up to it."" Then Master Parker would laugh as he related how Lem, pale and wan, flew up Main Street, and the scared and ragged son of the Twyfords made tracks in the mud as he dashed homeward along Water Street.

Immensely relieved, and not a little astonished, Lem listened at the door, and, feeling that he was all right, after all, lifted the latch and ventured in. His mother immediately turned her back on him, and his father, who had been laughing, drew down

a long and very sober face. Halfway across the floor to his father's chair in the chimney corner, Lem halted, uncertain whether to go or stay; for his mother's back was a bad omen, and his father's frown seemed to be growing darker.

"Do you know that Josiah Woods is looking for you, young man?" said his father, with a stern though shaking voice. Now, Josiah Woods was the town constable, a terror to evil-doers, a man whose business it was to arrest bad men, and carry them to the jail where they were locked up for a long time. His name struck a deep alarm into Lem's chilled soul.

The small culprit stood appalled before his father. His hair was tousled and dabbled with hay, and his clothes told where he had been in hiding. Some of the secret tears that he had shed in the darkness of the haymow had left their traces on his cheeks; and his dejected appearance, so small, so abject, and so woebegone, might have moved the pity of a sterner judge than Master Parker. The father was mightier than the judge, and, with a great burst of long-repressed laughter, Master Parker swept Lem into his arms and hugged him to his breast.

That night, when he went to bed by the light of the bedroom candle carried by his mother, Lem had a little talk with that good woman. She had gone out of the room to hide her smiles and tears when Lem was taken, like a homesick prodigal,

into his father's arms. But, before she took away the light that night, Lem had a kindly and loving lesson which he never forgot. Even the jibing Hal was silenced by the solemn words of the mother, and he twitted Lem no more. The lesson sunk into Lem's infantile mind, and there remained forever. So his first step in crime was his last.

CHAPTER III

HIS FAMILY AND HIS HOME

THE Parker house was an old-fashioned square building with a roof that was so steep that it gave space for several rooms in the attic, and those garret rooms were the joy and pride of the family. They were the playrooms for the children, and the storerooms for the grown people. Two big chimneys went up through that garret, and these were so contrived that one could walk around the chimney which came up at the north end of the house; and at the south end of the house the chimney was built against the wall in such a way that a broad and deep recess was formed in one corner where the sun lay long in the daytime.

Below, a wide hall, called the entry, ran through the house from the front to the back, with a door at each end. And there was a portico on the front end and a porch at the back. The windows in the front rooms were so deep that there was space in each of them for a pretty wide seat, and when Lem had a book that he loved to look at, he used to curl up in one of those window-seats, pull the heavy curtains together, and he was safely