When, still silent, he parted from his silent bondsmen, he went without delay to his false friend's home. He took the alleyway, as he always did, being pretty sure of finding the boys at this hour in the back yard splitting kindling or bringing in the wash from the clothesline, or engaged in similar small domestic duties. In fact he heard the sound of chopping wood as he opened the gate.
The sound abruptly ceased when he thrust in his head.
It had grown quite dark. He could not guess whether the figure with the shapeless cap bending over the kindling were Pete or Tom, until after an astonished gaze at the intruder it skulked behind a wash-tub set high on a wooden bench.
That was Pete—every time!
Now and again the old cap peeped hastily out from behind the wash-tub and was as hastily withdrawn.
Ned still stood at the gate. He hardly knew what had become of his resolve. He tried to rally it by thinking of the fate in store for him when this interval of liberty should be at an end and the day set for his trial dawn.
Here was the lying witness at his mercy. He could thrash him, and thrash him well,—for fat Pete was no fighter. But somehow he felt that a boy who hid behind his mother's wash-tub ought to be allowed to stay there. Pete did not seem worth a good substantial licking.
As Ned stood undecided one of his mother's injunctions flashed through his memory.
"Ef ye can't git yer consent ter return good fur evil," she often said, "hold yer hands ennyhow from harmin' them ez have hurt ye."
All his troubles, first and last, had come from disregarding that simple, uncultured mother's simple precepts.