“Ah! don’t tell me; I knows you did. There’s footmarks all along from the gap, right across the potato piece, and everybody else will begin to go the same way, and make a regular path of it.”
“But we didn’t go that way,” chorussed the boys.
“Why, what an old stupid it is,” said Philip; “he won’t believe anything.”
Sam’s trouble was a trampled track across a newly-enclosed piece of ground, which Mr Inglis had lately purchased near the village, and Sam had planted with potatoes for home consumption. It certainly was annoying, for a ditch had been cut round it, a bank made, and, on the top, a neat little hedge of hawthorn planted; but some idle people were in the habit of jumping across the ditch, trampling down the little hedge, and then making a track right across the corner of the field to the other side, where, in getting out, they trampled the hedge and bank down again, and all just to save themselves a walk of about fifty yards round, where there was a good path. But so it was: the property had lain in dispute for many years, during which time people had cut off the corner, and made themselves a track; and now that it was purchased, and had become private property, it seemed that there were some two or three obstinate, unpleasant people, who would not alter their plans, but took delight in the paltry piece of mischief of destroying what had been so carefully put in order. But Sam had always one complaint string upon which he fiddled or harped; and so sure as anything like mischief was done anywhere, he always declared it was “them boys,” who were “always up to suthin, drat ’em.” It was so when the walnuts were stolen, and the tree, broken about. Sam was sure it was “them boys,” and he went and told his master of Harry and Philip’s “capers,” as he called them. But Sam was wrong then, as upon many other occasions, and also upon this one, for a sad story hangs to that affair about the walnuts; and I do not think it will be out of place if I go back about a year and nine months, and leave the trampled path for the present, while I take up another.
Mr Inglis had standing in one of his fields, about fifty yards from the lane which led down to the mill, a very fine walnut-tree. The tree was not only fine in size, but noble in appearance, and the walnuts that it bore were of the largest and sweetest grown anywhere for miles round, and Mr Inglis rather prized these nuts, for they kept well, and might be seen upon his dessert-table long after Christmas time.
Now, it so happened that just as the nuts were getting ripe, and the first ones began to fall, breaking their green husk when they touched the ground, and setting the clean pale-brown shell at liberty,—it was just at this time that Sam found out that some one had been up the tree picking the walnuts, for not only were a great number missing, but the ground beneath was strewed with leaves, broken twigs, and walnut husks, with here and there a brown-shelled nut which the plunderer had looked over in his hurry.
No sooner did Sam see the mischief than he hurried off to the house, and bursting breathlessly into the breakfast-room, announced that Masters Harry and Philip had been taking all the walnuts.
Mr Inglis frowned, and told Sam, rather sharply, to knock before entering another time, and then turned to his sons, and asked them if what Sam said was true.
“No, Papa,” they both exclaimed indignantly, “we have not touched them.”
“Only,” said Harry, recollecting himself, “I did throw a stone in the tree yesterday, as we went down the lane, but it didn’t knock any down, and I should not have thrown only Phil said I couldn’t throw so far.”