“I have heard that that man is still living in Maine, and that after that joke he lost all regard for respectability, and became a beggar. I do not know that the report is true, but a man from Portland told my father so in my hearing.” The stillness continued. He added: “Governor Winthrop forgave a thief who robbed his woodpile, by sending for him and offering to give him the wood he needed.” The term drew to its close. Washington’s Birthday passed, the bell ringing out in the little white steeple. The March days grew long and bright, with occasional flurries of snow; the bluebirds came fluting into the gray orchards; the woodpeckers tapped the hollow trees, and the wild geese passed over, honking like flying trumpets or mellow horns in the sky. Early April brought examination day. The grave committee came, making my little principality tremble; heard the classes recite, read, and spell, made a “few remarks,” and then the winter school was over. I can see those old pupils now, as they stood in the yard about the door in the late April afternoon, their faces bright in the western sunlight. I never met them again as I saw them then. I parted with James with peculiar reluctance, as he was one of the most high-minded boys that I had ever met, and had a heart to feel and a hand to help. On examination day the “Melting Story” was read, which elicited from one of the members of the committee the rugged remark:— “That’s a good one; served him right; it wouldn’t ha’ been improper for the boys to laugh after a story like that, would it, teacher?” “No,” I answered. “I allow them to laugh in such a case.” But the class did not laugh. James’s inquiries in regard to the narrative had changed the spirit of all the young readers. The impression that James had made haunted me. It seemed to me that the story was incomplete, and I carried the sympathetic inquiry of my pupil in my mind: “What became of _that_ man?” One blue April day, a few years after the incident that had occurred in my dear old class, I was walking the streets of a great seaport city in Maine, when a very strange scene met my eye. Two boys came, as it were, flying from a narrow street into a public square, each screaming at the top of his voice,— “Trip-Trip-to-dee-dee! Trip-Trip-to-dee-dee! Who stole the butter?” My eye followed them in lively curiosity, and at once the old story in the reading-book and James’s inquiry came rushing back to my mind. I had heard that there were two stories of this kind, and which one had given rise to the popular reading-book narrative could hardly be determined except by the author, of whom I knew nothing.