It was a good-natured community. To early apples, indeed, the rogues were welcome; but garden pears, plums, and grapes were more highly prized, for in Maine it requires some little care to raise them. At the farm of our nearest neighbors, the Edwardses, there were five greengage trees that bore delicious plums. For three summers in succession Alfred and Harvey stole nearly every plum on those trees--at least, there was little doubt that it was they who took them. They also took the old Squire's pears in the walled pen. Twice Addison and I tracked them home the next morning in the dewy grass, across the fields. Time and again, too, they took our Bartlett pears and plums. Addison wanted the old Squire to send the sheriff after them and put a stop to their raids, but he only laughed. "Oh, I suppose those boys love pears and plums," he said, forbearingly. But we of the younger generation were indignant. One day, when the old Squire and I were driving to the village, we met Alfred; the old gentleman stopped, and said to him: "My son, hadn't you better leave me just a few of those pears in the old pound this year?" "I never touched a pear there!" Alfred shouted. "You can't prove I did, and you'd better not accuse me." The old Squire only laughed, and drove on. A few nights afterward both pear-trees were robbed and nearly stripped of fruit. We found several broken twigs on the top branches, and guessed that Alfred had used a long pole with a hook at the end with which to shake down the fruit. After what had passed on the road this action looked so much like defiance that the old Squire was nettled. He did nothing about it at the time, however. Another year passed. Then at table one night Ellen remarked that Harvey Yeatton had come to visit Alfred again. "Alfred brought him up from the village this afternoon," she said. "I saw them drive by together." "Now the pears and plums will have to suffer again!" said I. "Yes," said Ellen. "They stopped down at the foot of the hill, and looked up at those two pear-trees in the old pound; then they glanced at the house, to see if any one had noticed that they were passing." "Those pears are just getting ripe," said Addison. "It wouldn't astonish me if they disappeared to-night. There's no moon, is there?" "No," said grandmother Ruth. "It's the dark of the moon. Joseph, you had better look out for your pears to-night," she added, laughing. The old Squire went on eating his supper for some minutes without comment; but just as we finished, he said, "Boys, where did we put our skunk fence last fall?" "Rolled it up and put it in the wagon-house chamber," said I. "About a hundred and fifty feet of it, isn't there?" "A hundred and sixty," said Addison. "Enough, you know, to go round that patch of sweet corn in the garden."