e Eighth
Commandment. But I leave him to your Christian discipline! Let us hope
that if, through his stiff-necked obduracy, he has haply escaped the
vengeance of man's law, he will not escape the rod of the domestic
tabernacle."

"Ye kin leave him to me," said Mrs. Medliker, in her anxiety to get rid
of the parson, assuming a confidence she was far from feeling.

"So be it, Sister Medliker," said Staples, drawing a long, satisfactory
breath; "and let us trust that when you have rastled with his flesh
and spirit, you will bring us joyful tidings to Wednesday's Mother's
Meeting."

He clapped his soft hat on his head, cast another glance at the wicked
Johnny, opened the door with his hand behind him, and backed himself
into the road.

"Now, Johnny," said Mrs. Medliker, setting her lips together as the door
closed, "look me right in the face, and say where you stole that gold."

But Johnny evidently did not think that his mother's face at that moment
offered any moral support, for he did not look at her; but, after gazing
at the kettle, said slowly, "I didn't steal no gold."

"Then," said Mrs. Medliker triumphantly, "if ye didn't steal it, you'd
say right off HOW ye got it."

Children are often better logicians than their elders. To John Bunyan
the stealing of gold and the mere refusal to say where he got it were
two distinct and separate things; that the negation of the second
proposition meant the affirmation of the first he could not accept. But
then children are also imitative, and fearful of the older intellect. It
struck Johnny that his mother might be right, and that to her it really
meant the same thing. So, after a moment's silence he replied more
confidently, "I suppose I stoled it."

But he was utterly unprepared for the darkening change in his mother's
face, and her furious accents. "You stole it?--you STOLE it, you limb!
And you sit there and brazenly tell me! Who did you steal it from? Tell
me quick, afore I wring it out of you!"

Completely astounded and bewildered at this new turn of affairs, Johnny
again fell back upon the dreadful truth, and gasped, "I don't know."

"You don't know, you devil! Did you take it from Frazer's?"

"No."

"From the Simmons Brothers?"

"No."

"From the Blazing Star Company?"

"No."

"From a store?"

"No."

"Then, in created goodness!--WHERE did you get it?"

Johnny raised his brown-gooseberry eyes for a single instant to his
mother's and said, "I found