"Stop!" cried the boy, suddenly finding his voice; "I reckon I can fix it! I was meaning to tell ma! I only wanted to see that little thing inside that ticks. I'll bet I'll fix it. I didn't go to hurt it, Grace!" "O, yes, you feel like you could mend watches, and fire guns, and be soldiers and generals," said Grace, shaking her ringlets; "but I'm going right down to tell ma!" Horace's lips curled with scorn. "That's right, Gracie; run and _tell_!" "But, Horace, I ought to tell," said Grace, meekly; "it's my duty! Isn't there a little voice at your heart, and don't it say, you've done wicked?" "There's a voice there," replied the boy, pertly; "but it don't say what you think it does. It says, 'If your pa finds out about the watch, won't you catch it?'" To do Horace justice, he did mean to tell his mother. He had been taught to speak the truth, and the whole truth, cost what it might. He knew that his parents could forgive almost anything sooner than a falsehood, or a cowardly concealment. Words cannot tell how Mr. Clifford hated deceit. "When a _lie_ tempts you, Horace," said he, "scorn it, if it looks ever so white! Put your foot on it, and crush it like a snake!" Horace ate dry toast again this morning, but no one seemed to notice it. If he had dared look up, he would have seen that his father and mother wore sorrowful faces. After breakfast, Mr. Clifford called him into the library. In the first place, he took to pieces the mangled watch, and showed him how it had been injured. "Have you any right to meddle with things which belong to other people, my son?" Horace's chin snuggled down into the hollow place in his neck, and he made no reply. "Answer me, Horace." "No, sir." "It will cost several dollars to pay for repairing this watch: don't you think the little boy who did the mischief should give part of the money?" Horace looked distressed; his face began to twist itself out of shape. "This very boy has a good many pieces of silver which were given him to buy fire-crackers. So you see, if he is truly sorry for his fault, he knows the way to atone for it." Horace's conscience told him, by a twinge, that it would be no more than just for him to pay what he could for mending the watch. "Have you nothing to say to me, my child?" For, instead of speaking, the boy was working his features into as many shapes as if they had been made of gutta percha. This was a bad habit of his, though, when he was doing it, he had no idea of "making up faces." His father told him he would let him have the whole day to decide whether he ought to give up any of his money. A tear trembled in each of Horace's eyes, but, before they could fall, he caught them on his thumb and forefinger. "Now," continued Mr. Clifford, "I have something to tell you. I decided last night to enter the army." "O, pa," cried Horace, springing up, eagerly; "mayn't I go, too?" "You, my little son?"