“Oh, I guess 't ain't the book 't she cares for. S' far forth 's the book goes, I guess she can afford to buy another book, well enough. B't I tell her she's done 'n awful thing, and a thing 't she'll carry to her grave 'th her, 'n't she'll remember to her dyin' day. That's what _I_ tell her.” “She ha'n't got any call to feel bad about it,” said Lemuel clumsily. “It was just a mistake.” Then, not knowing what more to say, he said, being come to the outer door by this time, “Well, I wish you good morning.” “Well, good morning,” said 'Manda Grier, and she thrust her elbow sharply into Statira Dudley's side, so that she also said faintly-- “Well, good morning!” She was fluent enough on the witness-stand and in the police station, but now she could not find a word to say. The three stood together on the threshold of the court-house, not knowing how to get away from one another. 'Manda Grier put out her hand to Lemuel. He took it, and, “Well, good morning,” he said again. “Well, good morning,” repeated 'Manda Grier. Then Statira put out her hand, and she and Lemuel shook hands, and said together, “Well, good morning,” and on these terms of high civility they parted. He went one way and they another. He did not look back, but the two girls, marching off with locked arms and flying tongues, when they came to the corner, turned to look back. They both turned inward, and so bumped their heads together. “Why, you--coot!” cried 'Manda Grier, and they broke out laughing. Lemuel heard their laugh, and he knew they were laughing at him; but he did not care. He wandered on, he did not know whither, and presently he came to the only place he could remember. VII. The place was the Common, where his trouble had begun. He looked back to the beginning, and could see that it was his own fault. To be sure, you might say that if a fellow came along and offered to pay you fifty cents for changing a ten-dollar bill, you had a right to take it; but there was a voice in Lemuel's heart which warned him that greed to another's hurt was sin, and that if you took too much for a thing from a necessitous person, you oppressed and robbed him. You could make it appear otherwise, but you could not really change the nature of the act. He owned this with a sigh, and he owned himself justly punished. He was still on those terms of personal understanding with the eternal spirit of right which most of us lose later in life, when we have so often seemed to see the effect fail to follow the cause, both in the case of our own misdeeds and the misdeeds of others.