"I say, Phil, that's doosed mean now, to be stealing my apples!" "Who's stole your apples?" says Phil, with a great roar of voice. "You have," says Reuben; and having now come near enough to find his pyramid of stones all laid low, he says more angrily,--"You're a thief! and you've got 'em in your pocket!" "Thief!" says Phil, looking threateningly, and throwing away his apple half-eaten, "if you call me a thief, I say you're a----you know what." "Well, blast you," says Reuben, boiling with rage, "say it! Call me a liar, if you dare!" "I do dare," says Phil, "if you accuse me of stealing your apples; and I say you're a liar, and be darned to you!" At this, Reuben, though he is the shorter by two or three inches, and no match for his foe at fisticuffs, plants a blow straight in Philip's face. (He said afterward, when all was settled, that he was ten times more mortified to think that he had done such a thing in his father's orchard.) But Phil closed upon him, and kneading him with his knuckles in the back, and with a trip, threw him heavily, falling prone upon him. Reuben, in a frenzy, and with a torrent of much worse language than he was in the habit of using, was struggling to turn him, when a sharp, loud voice, which they both knew only too well, came down the wind,--"Boys! boys!" and presently the Doctor comes up panting. "What does this mean? Philip, I'm ashamed of you!" he continues; and Philip rises. Reuben, rising, too, the instant after, and with his fury unchecked, dashes at Phil again; when the Doctor seizes him by the collar and drags him aside. "He struck me," says Phil. "And he stole my apples and called me a liar," says Reuben, with the tears starting, though he tries desperately to keep them back, seeing that Phil shows no such evidence of emotion. "Tut! tut!" says the Doctor,--"you are both too angry for a straight story. Come with me." And taking each by the hand, he led them through the garden and house, directly into his study. There he opens a closet-door, with the sharp order, "Step in here, Reuben, until I hear Philip's story." This Phil tells straight-forwardly,--how he was passing through the orchard with a pocketful of apples, which a neighbor's boy had given, and how Reuben came upon him with swift accusation, and then the fight. "But he hurt me more than I hurt him," says Phil, wiping his nose, which showed a little ooze of blood. "Good!" says the Doctor,--"I think you tell the truth." "Thank you," says Phil,--"I know I do, Doctor." Next Reuben is called out. "Do you _know_ he took the apples?" asks the Doctor. "Don't know," says Reuben,--"but he was by the place, and the stones thrown down." "And is that sufficient cause, Reuben, for accusing your friend?" At which, Reuben, shifting his position uneasily from one foot to the other, says,-- "I believe he did, though." "Stop, Sir!" says the Doctor in a voice that makes Reuben sidle away.