Just beyond the bridge is an ancient apple orchard. This was already falling into decay when I was a boy, and the many years that have elapsed since then have nearly completed its demolition; although I dare say the present generation of school-boys still find it worth while to clamber over the wall, as they journey back and forth. Probably it will be no surprise to the owner of the place if I tell him that before I was twelve years old I knew the taste of all his apples. In fact, the orchard was so sequestered, so remote from any house,--especially from its proprietor's,--that it hardly seemed a sin to rob it. It was not so much an orchard as a bit of woodland; and besides, we never shook the trees, but only helped ourselves to windfalls; and it must be a severe moralist who calls _that_ stealing. Why should the fruit drop off, if not to be picked up? In my time, at all events, such appropriations were never accounted robbery, though the providential absence of the owner was unquestionably a thing to be thankful for. He would never begrudge us the apples, of course, for he was rich and presumably generous; but it was quite as well for him to be somewhere else while we were gathering up these favors which the winds of heaven had shaken down for our benefit. There is something of the special pleader in most of us, it is to be feared, whether young or old. If we are put to it, we can draw a very fine distinction (in our own favor), no matter how obtuse we may seem on ordinary occasions. Remembering how voracious and undiscriminating my juvenile appetite was, I cannot help wondering that I am still alive,--a feeling which I doubt not is shared by many a man who, like myself, had a country bringing-up. We must have been born with something more than a spark of life, else it would certainly have been smothered long ago by the fuel so recklessly heaped upon it. But we lived out-of-doors, took abundant exercise, were not studious overmuch (as all boys and girls are charged with being nowadays), and had little to worry about, which may go far to explain the mystery.