"But oh! Sir," cried Stephen in alarm, "you will, you will get me out of this scrape!"
"I'll do my best," answered the vicar, "and I've little doubt but that I shall succeed."
Mrs. Curtis, with a hand that trembled with joyful excitement, had already dipped a pen into ink, and a clear brief statement of the whole truth was soon drawn up and signed, first by Stephen in round text, very shaky and uneven, then by the pastor and his lady as witnesses.
"I am so glad," said the vicar's wife, as she brought to her husband his hat and stick, and a comforter to protect him from the night air. "I am so thankful that the character of that gallant tar is now cleared from all suspicion."
"And I am as glad and thankful," said the vicar, looking at Stephen White as he spoke, "that one of my boys, resolving not to add sin unto sin, has come forward with a brave confession, and that I shall always be able henceforth to trust his honour and his word."
Stephen gave a great sigh of relief; a weight was lifted off from the heart of the boy; he felt that now he could bear even the risk of being sent to prison.
[CHAPTER IX.]
CLEARING UP.
"A PRECIOUS scrape Uncle Ned has got himself into!" exclaimed Dan on the following morning, as he blew the steam from his bowl of hot milk and bread. "He'll be had up afore the magistrate to-day, and then clapped into jail for I don't know how long!"
"If he'd only had the wit to say that he'd never entered them woods!" exclaimed Bessy.