Silas advanced towards them; he also was smiling. He fumbled in his waistcoat pocket, and drew out a roll of paper which he shook out with trembling fingers. He stepped close to Thomas Payne and extended it. "What is it?" asked the young man. Silas smiled up in his face with the ingenuous smile of a child. "What is it?" Thomas Payne asked again. The others crowded around. "It's nothin' but the bill," replied Silas, in a wheedling whisper. His dry old face turned red, his smile deepened. "The bill for what?" demanded Thomas Payne, and he seized the paper. "For the cherries you eat," replied Silas. "I've always been in the habit of chargin' more, but I've took off a leetle this time." His voice had a ring of challenge, his eyes were sharp, while his mouth smiled. Thomas Payne scowled over the bill. The other young men peered at it over his shoulder, and repeated the amount with whistles and half-laughs of scorn and anger. The girls ejaculated to each other in whispers. Silas stood impervious, waiting. The young men whipped out their purses without a word, but Thomas motioned them back. "I'll pay, and we'll settle afterwards. We can't divide up here," he said, and he crammed some money hard in Silas's eagerly outstretched hand. "Thank you for your hospitality, Mr. Berry," said Thomas Payne, his face all flaming and his eyes flashing, but his voice quite steady. "I hope you'll have as good luck selling your cherries next year." There was a little exulting titter over the sarcasm among the girls, in which Rebecca did not join; then the party kept on. The indignant clamor waxed loud in a moment; they scarcely waited for the old man's back to be turned on his return to the tavern. But the young people, crying out all together against this last unparalleled meanness, had not reached the foot of the hill, where some of them separated, when they heard the quick pound of running feet behind them and a hoarse voice calling on Thomas Payne to stop. They all turned, and William came up, pale and breathing hard. "What did you pay him?" he asked of Thomas Payne. "See here, William, we all know you had nothing to do with it," Thomas cried out. "What did you pay him?" William repeated, in a stern gasp. "It's all right." "You tell me what you paid him." Thomas Payne blushed all over his handsome boyish face. He half whispered the amount to William, although the others knew it as well as he. William pulled out his purse, and counted out some money with trembling fingers. "Take it, for God's sake!" said he, and Thomas Payne took it. "We all know that you knew nothing about it," he said again. The others chimed in with eager assent, but William gave his head a shake, as if he shook off water, and broke away from them all, and pelted up the hill with his heart so bitterly sore that it seemed as if he trod on it at every step.