“No, she won’t; her bark is a heap worse than her bite. Why, we got to be right chummy, and she offered me some of the melon. I really like the old lady,” Paul said, while Jack made a grimace, and then lay perfectly still, with his hands folded under his head, thinking of the dream which had so impressed him. Meanwhile Miss Hansford, who had watched Paul until he disappeared from sight, was talking to herself about him as she went about her morning work. “That’s a fine boy,” she said, “if he did steal my watermelon, and I’d trust him any where, if he don’t know the eighth commandment. I b’lieve t’other one was Jack Percy,—the worst limb I ever knew. Calls the camp-meetin’ a circus and _me_ the clown! I’d like to——” She jammed a griddle down hard on the stove in token of what she’d like to do to the reprobate Jack, who had dreamed that she killed him under the scrub oaks. Then she turned her thoughts to the Ralstons. It was only that summer that they had taken possession of the big house on the knoll overlooking the sea. Carpenters had been there at work early in May, removing walls inside to throw the rooms together, cutting the windows down to the floor, building piazzas and porches and bay windows here and there, until the house was so changed that there was little left of the original except the look-out on the roof and the immense chimney, which Mrs. Ralston clung to for the sake of the fireplaces, and because there was nothing like it on the Island. Once she thought to tear down the inclosure to the smugglers’ room in the cellar, entrance to which was through a concealed door under a closet stairs, but Paul, who was with her, begged her to leave it for his play-room. He knew all the stories of his ancestor, who was said to have filled the place from time to time with smuggled goods, which were sold at a high price and made the old sea captain rich. This, however, was so many years before that the smuggler taint had died out, except as some ill-natured people revived the story, with a sneer at the Ralston wealth, the foundation of which was laid in the cellar of the Ralston House. Paul, boy-like, was rather pleased with the idea of so renowned an ancestor, and, during his stay in Oak City, while the repairs were going on, used to spend half his time on the roof, pretending that he was watching for the Vulture returning from its long voyage and tacking about here and there until a white flag from the look-out told that the coast was clear. The other half of his time he spent in the Smugglers’ room, playing at hiding from the police, while Tom Drake, a boy about his own age, and son of the man who had charge of the place, acted the part of policeman and thundered for admittance against the door of the basement. Was there an influence in the atmosphere surrounding the two boys which prompted them to play at what in many of its details became a reality in after years. I think