Coming to a place where the brook made a broad bend partly across the meadow, the oxen rushed blindly off the turfy bank, and landed, load and all, in two or three feet of water and mud. When the load struck in the brook, I went off, heels over head, and fell on the nigh ox's back. The oxen were mired, and so was the load. We were obliged to get the horses to haul the cattle out, and both the oxen and horses were required to haul out the cart. Altogether, it was a very muddy episode; and though rather startling while it lasted, we yet laughed a great deal over it afterwards. CHAPTER XVIII APPLE-HOARDS We heard a great deal concerning "Reconstruction" of the Union that summer. The Old Squire was painfully concerned about it; he feared that Congress had made mistakes which would nullify the results gained by the Civil War. The low character of the men, sent to the South to administer the government, revolted him. He used to bring his newspaper to the table nearly every meal and would sometimes fling it down indignantly, crying, "Wrong! wrong! all wrong!" Then he and Addison would discuss current politics, while the rest of us listened, Theodora gravely, Halstead scoffing, and I often very absently, for as a boy I had other more trivial interests chiefly in mind. I recall that the old gentleman used frequently to exclaim, "You boys must begin to read the Constitution. Next after the Bible, the Constitution ought to be read in every family in our land." I have to confess that at this particular time I was much less interested in the Constitution than in the luscious fall apples out in the orchard, and the rivalry to secure them. "Have you got a hoard?" was the question which, at about this time, began to be whispered among us. At first the query was a novelty to me; my thoughts went back to a story which I had once read concerning a horde of robbers on the steppes of Central Asia. In this case, however, the thing referred to was a hoard of early apples. I had gone to the Edwardses on some domestic errand; it was directly after breakfast, and Thomas, who was putting a new tooth in the "loafer rake," had set a fine, mellow "wine-sap," from which he had taken a bite, on the shed sill beside him. "Got a pile of those fellows in my hoard," he remarked, with a boastful wink. "Have you got a hoard down at your house?" "Tom is always bragging about his hoard," said Catherine, who had come to the kitchen door, to hear any news which I might have to impart. "He thinks nobody can have a hoard but himself." "She's got one," Tom whispered to me, as Catherine turned away. "She's awful sly about it, for fear I'll find it, and I think I know where it is. I'll bet she has gone to it now," he added, taking another bite; and jumping up, he peeped into the kitchen. "She _has_" he whispered to me. "Come on, _still_; don't say a word and we will catch her."