“How d’ye know I was asleep?” Miss Hansford asked. Paul did not dare tell her of the whispered comment of his companion: “Hear the old she-dragon go it. A cannonade can’t wake her,” but there was a twinkle in his eyes as he replied: “We—or I heard you snore.” No one likes to be told they snore, and Miss Hansford was not an exception. With a toss of her head she replied: “A likely story. You must have good ears. How did you get over the piece of barbed wire I put in the grass to keep just such tramps as you out of my melon patch?” “I fell over it and tore my trousers; that’s the way mother found out what I’d done. Father whaled me good,” the boy said, still holding the melon, which Miss Hansford had not offered to take. “Served you right, and I s’pose he made you buy the melon and bring it to me,” was Miss Hansford’s comment, while something in the face of the boy appealed to her in his favor. “He didn’t know a thing about it,” Paul said. “I bought it with my own money,—saved to buy me a fishing rod. I thought it out last night when I couldn’t sleep.” “Your conscience troubled you, I hope,” Miss Hansford said, taking the melon from him at last, and thinking as she did so what a fine, large one it was. She was beginning to soften, and Paul knew it, and was not half as much afraid of her as when he first came in, his knees knocking together with fear of what might befall him. Jack Percy, his coadjutor in the theft, had ridiculed the idea of making restitution and confession. “The old woman is awful,” he said, “and will thrash you worse than your father did. I know her. She threw hot water on me once when I was tying a piece of paper to her cat’s tail. They say she keeps red pepper and fire crackers for dogs and boys.” Paul was not to be persuaded from his purpose. “I’ll risk her any way,” he said, while Jack rejoined: “Don’t bring me into the scrape. She’ll never forget it, for she hates me like pizen now.” Paul promised not to implicate his friend, and as soon as he thought the fresh melons were in market he bought the finest one he could find and took it to Miss Hansford, feeling glad now that he had done so. She had thrown neither hot water, nor red pepper, nor fire crackers at him. Her face was not half as vinegary as it had been at first, and when she spoke of his conscience there was a roguish smile around his mouth as he replied: “I s’pose it ought to have troubled me, and it did some, but what kept me awake was the awful stomach-ache, which nearly bent me up double. I ate too much melon, and it wasn’t very good,—wasn’t ripe, nor half so sweet as this one I’ve brought you. I told ’em I wanted the very best, and made ’em plug it to be sure. It’s first rate. Cut it, and see.” Miss Hansford was not one to capitulate at once, and she answered, rather stiffly: “You ought to have had stomach-ache. ’Twill teach you a lesson, maybe. Do you go to Sunday-school?” “Yes’m,” Paul replied, and Miss Hansford continued: “’Piscopal, I s’pose?”