Then Matt, who has listened with considerable interest, yet with a pre-occupied air, told the story of the attempted burglary, but explained away the supposition that the thief was scared off by the cat.
"That shows," said Jack, briskly, "how necessary the work was that we did last night. Whiskey made that thief, you see—I shouldn't wonder if what you were about at the same time had something to do with his being influenced to go away. Don't you know how these things happen in books sometimes? I once read—"
Jack suddenly ceased talking, but burst out laughing, and finally dropped upon the chips and rolled about in a perfect convulsion of laughter, while Matt looked on in mute astonishment.
"Oh, Matt," he exclaimed finally, "don't you understand? That smell of whiskey was on you somewhere—I smell it now. And you were so excited when you went in, that you forgot to latch the door—I've done the same thing, once or twice. Oh, oh, oh, that's too rich. I'll die if I can't tell somebody."
Matt immediately swore his companion to strict secresy, but later in the day, which happened to be Saturday, he became so uncomfortable at hearing his father discuss the attempted burglary with everyone who entered the store that he confessed the whole affair to Mr. Bolton. That gentleman made a valiant effort at reproof, but he did not love Hoccamine more than business rivals usually love each other, and he was an earnest advocate of total abstinence, so he made some excuse to get at his account books, and for the remainder of the day he was subject to violent fits of laughter whenever he was not trying to truthfully modify his story of the burglary to the many acquaintances who came in to enquire about it.
CHAPTER III.
INJURY AND RESTITUTION.
Dr. Wittingham, whose only son Jack was, sat in his office one morning compounding a complicated and consequently a favorite prescription of his own, and at the same time pondering upon the equally complicated character of his boy. The doctor had been a boy himself, a third of a century before, and an extremely lively one, if the traditions of his native village had been correctly handed down, but a man's memory is not in the habit of going backward half a lifetime, unless in search of old sweethearts, so the doctor owned to himself that Jack was without exception the most mischievous boy he had ever known or heard of.
"It passes all explanation, too," said the doctor, sitting down and watching his prescription as it filtered slowly into a glass beneath it. "I'm a man of good behavior if ever there was one, his mother was a lady born and bred, he knows the Bible better than our minister does, and there's nothing good but what the boy seems to take a lively interest in. I was going to write a book upon heredity, basing it upon the development of that boy's character as inherited from his parents and modified by such teachings as I have imparted, to improve the original stock. But bless me! I'm sometimes unable to find the original stock at all, and as for the improvements I intend to make in it, well, they're as invisible as the ailments of some of my rich patients. Whatever I say to him seems to filter through him more rapidly than that mixture is doing through the paper, and leaves not even a sediment behind, while whatever he shouldn't hear seems to stick to him like an adhesive plaster. Before he goes to school, he recites his lessons to me in the most perfect manner; when he comes home he brings a written complaint from the teacher, who has found him outrageously mischievous all day long; and when his mother takes any of his torn jackets and trowsers in hand, she is certain to find two or three more documents of the same kind which Jack has kindly forgotten to deliver, perhaps out of regard for my feelings. He will chop wood all day Saturday for the Widow Batty or some other needy person, until I determine he's growing to be too good to live; then my own dinner comes up underdone because he hasn't considered that wood-chopping, like charity, should begin at home. I've heard no complaints of him for nearly a week; there must be a terrible shower of them brewing somewhere."
There was a knock at the door, and the town supervisor of roads entered.