The neighbors, on their return from church, stopped as usual, but it was not, alas! to admire the apples, for apples there were none left, but to lament the robbery, and console the widow. Mean time the red-streaks were safely lodged in Giles's hovel under a few bundles of new hay which he had contrived to pull from a farmer's mow the night before for the use of his jack-asses. Such a stir, however, began to be made about the widow's apple-tree, that Giles, who knew how much his character had laid him open to suspicion, as soon as he saw the people safe in church again in the afternoon, ordered his boys to carry each a hatful of the apples and thrust them in a little casement window which happened to be open in the house of Samuel Price, a very honest carpenter in that parish, who was at church with his whole family. Giles's plan, by this contrivance, was to lay the theft on Price's sons in case the thing should come to be further inquired into. Here Dick put in a word, and begged and prayed his father not to force them to carry the apples to Price's. But all he got by his begging was such a knock as had nearly laid him on the earth. "What, you cowardly rascal," said Giles, "you will go and _'peach_, I suppose, and get your father sent to jail." Poor Widow Brown, though her trouble had made her still weaker than she was, went to church again in the afternoon; indeed she rightly thought that her being in trouble was a new reason why she ought to go. During the service she tried with all her might not to think of her red-streaks, and whenever they would come into her head, she took up her prayer-book directly, and so she forgot them a little; and, indeed, she found herself much easier when she came out of the church than when she went in; an effect so commonly produced by prayer, that methinks it is a pity people do not try it oftener. Now it happened, oddly enough, that on that Sunday, of all the Sundays in the year, the widow should call in to rest a little at Samuel Price's, to tell over again the lamentable story of the apples, and to consult with him how the thief might be brought to justice. But oh, reader! guess, if you can, for I am sure I can not tell you, what was her surprise, when, on going into Samuel Price's kitchen, she saw her own red-streaks lying on the window! The apples were of a sort too remarkable, for color, shape, and size, to be mistaken. There was not such another tree in the parish. Widow Brown immediately screamed out, "Alas-a-day! as sure as can be, here are my red-streaks; I could swear to them in any court." Samuel Price, who believed his sons to be as honest as himself, was shocked and troubled at the sight. He knew he had no red-streaks of his own, he knew there were no apples in the window when he went to church; he did verily believe these apples to be the widow's. But how came they there he could not possibly guess. He called for Tom, the only one of his sons who now lived at home.