"Jericho!" said 'Bijah; and he hadn't much more than said it before he was scrambling up the tree like a great ourang-outang. With some difficulty he unhooked Benny and brought him to earth, and his great warm heart swelled with tender pity as he returned home with the poor boy in his arms; and his shoulder was as wet with Benny's tears when he reached there, as if he had been out in a thunder storm. I dare say you will partly guess the story of Benny's misfortune, but for the sake of those who are not good guessers, I shall tell you that he had taken a fancy to cut across a corner of the Kingsbury farm that morning, to make the distance to his grandmother's shorter, in his unwise fashion, never considering that climbing walls and fences, paddling through the marshy meadows and contriving to get over the ditch would more than overbalance the few steps he saved. When he reached the Kingsbury orchard, where all the apple boughs were trained in horizontal lines, with a view to making them bear well, his head seemed to swim with suggestions of tight ropes. Around and above the air was filled with golden opportunities as near to tight ropes as Paradise is near to Heaven itself. These precious opportunities whispered to Benny, the charming visions beckoned, and Benny felt that if it cost him two and sixpence, he _must_ have a walk on some of those enchanting boughs. Everything was just as it had been left when Mr. Kingsbury died. Against one of the trees stood a ladder, and scattered all about under the trees were the limbs that had been lopped off, under his direction, the very day when he fell with apoplexy. Here and there they had been gathered up in bristling piles.