Alice promised, and feeling that he was restored to favor, Jeff ran off with his basket of lilies, while Alice changed her boots and went down to breakfast with her aunt, who asked where she had been and with whom. Alice told her of Jeff, who had offered to stand on his head in the boat and not rock it, and had picked her pocket as they came up the hill. “The wretch!” Mrs. Tracy exclaimed. “A pickpocket! A thief! You ought to report him. We are not safe here, and Helen so careless with her money and jewelry.” As well as she could Alice explained, saying it was done for fun,—that there was no harm in the boy,—that she liked him immensely, and would trust him anywhere. While she talked Jeff was crouching under an open window, cutting the long grass with a sickle and hearing all that was said. At first he resented Alice’s telling of his prank, but his anger died away as he listened to her defense of him. Mrs. Tracy had called him a thief, and it had a bad sound. “I ain’t a thief,” he thought, wiping his eyes where the tears were beginning to gather. “I never kep’ a cent’s wuth from anybody. I do it because I can’t help it, my fingers tingle so to try it. I was mean to lie to her when she spoke so nice to me, and put her hand on my head as if she liked me. I feel it there now,” and he put his soiled hand where Alice’s white one had lain and where in imagination he would feel it again in after years when temptation and sin had marred the beauty and blighted the innocence of a face which was so frank and open now in its young boyhood. CHAPTER XI. ALICE AND CRAIG. Craig had been sitting on the piazza a long time waiting for somebody to come, but the somebody waited for had not appeared and he was growing rather impatient and wondering what kept her. Twice Mark Hilton had walked the length of the piazza,—an unusual proceeding for him at that hour in the morning when his duties confined him in the office. Once as he was passing Craig he stopped abruptly and asked, “Have you seen her?” Craig felt intuitively whom he meant and answered, “No, have you?” “Only very indistinctly in the rain,” Mark replied, and walked on wondering at the unrest which possessed him and had made him quite as wakeful the previous night as Craig had been.