"Look in the nest. See what lies on the bottom, where the little robins nestled. I got the nest after they all flew away together, and there in the bottom was my mother's lace collar, not good to wear any longer, so I have let it stay there ever since. Do you suppose young robins ever had such a costly bed?"
CHARLEY BENNET'S GHOST STORY.
BY MRS. MARGARET EYTINGE.
"It is a sin to steal a pin,
As well as any greater thing,"
sang little Al Smith, in a loud, shrill voice.
"Very good sentiment, but very poor rhyme," drawled Hen Rowe (whose father was a poet), patting the singer's flaxen head in a patronizing manner.
"Talking of stealing," said Charley Bennet, dropping the pumpkin he was turning into a lantern, "did I ever tell you fellers about the time I went down to old Pop Robins's to steal apples, and came back past the barn where the horse-thief hung himself years and years ago, 'cause he knew the constables—they called 'em constables in those times—were after him, and that he'd be hung by somebody else if he didn't? No? Here's a ghost story for you, then, and I hope it will be a warning to you all never to take anything that doesn't belong to you, 'specially apples.
"You see, Billy Evans and I were staying with our folks at the hotel in Bramblewood that summer, and about two miles away was Pop Robins's farm. He used to bring eggs and chickens and vegetables and fruit to the hotel; and, oh my! wasn't he stingy?—you'd better believe it. He wouldn't even give you two or three blackberries, and if you asked him for an apple, he'd tremble all over. A reg'lar old miser he was, with lots of money, and a bully apple orchard. 'Let's go there some night and help ourselves,' says Billy Evans, one day. 'Dogs,' says I. 'Only one,' says he; 'I know him, and so do you—old Snaggletooth; I gave him almost all the meat we took for crab bait the day we didn't catch any.' 'All right,' says I.
"But when the night we'd agreed on came, Billy had cousins—girls—down from New York, and he had to stay home and entertain them. I don't care much for girls myself, and I was afraid they might want me to help entertain them too, so I made up my mind to go down to Pop Robins's alone. It was a splendid night; the moon shone so bright that it was almost as light as day. I scudded along, whistling away, until I got within half a mile of the orchard, and then I stopped my noise and walked as softly as possible, till I came to the first apple-tree. I shinned up that tree in a jiffy (old Snaggletooth didn't put in an appearance), filled my bag with jolly fat apples, and slid down again. But when I came to lift the bag up on my shoulder, I found it was awful heavy to carry so far, and I was just agoing to dump some of the apples out, when I remembered all of a sudden that if I cut across the meadow to the plank-road, I could get back to the hotel in a little more than half the time it would take to go the way I came.