Two masons who did not like each other, were working at a granite wall that I was building here in 1906. Hearing angry voices, I went down and found one of them accusing the other of having stolen his spirit-level. I asked him where he used it last, and told him to take a few stones off the wall just there--I knew the way he worked--and there was the spirit-level in the mortar underneath a stone. He had put it there and overlooked it, and now was vexed to find he had no charge to make against the other man. Thefts are very rare here. If there are goods or parcels for anyone who does not live near a main road, they are put down on the wayside where his road turns off, and he comes over to fetch them. There was a sad case some while ago--near Ipplepen, if I remember right. A man came over on a Monday to fetch some things that had been left for him on the Saturday; and they had gone. And people shook their heads and wondered what the world was coming to, if you couldn’t leave things by the wayside from a Saturday to a Monday without their being carried off. In going to the Scilly islands in 1907 part of my luggage went astray at Penzance between the railway-station and the pier. I reported this at the police-station, thinking that the things might have been stolen; but the inspector seemed quite hurt at the suggestion, and answered, “No, sir, we have no thieves here.” (The things were found at an hotel, but not until the boat had left.) There was no policeman in the Scillies: no thieves there, and when sea-faring men got drunk, the coastguard quelled them down. So also at Sark I found no policeman on the island, and no need for one, as the Seigneur sent unsatisfactory people into exile. Afghanistan was likewise kept in order in this autocratic way, but by more drastic means: an old Anglo-Indian explained to me that if a man was even suspected of committing a crime there, the Ameer would have him beheaded at once. Of course, apples are not quite safe here. One of my neighbours had an orchard from which he got no fruit at all; and nobody would buy the crop, as it was always picked by someone else. At last the local policeman bought it; and this caused such a scare among the boys that they left the fruit alone. One does not so much grudge the fruit they take as the damage that they do in taking it--small boys will break a branch off a young tree to get a little fruit. At one time cider apples were secure; but in these democratic days boys think one apple as good as another, and eat sorts that their forefathers would never touch. Cider apples are not good to eat, and if you eat them, you will have less cider; and this was possibly a reason why the wise old folk avoided them.