apple-heap below; and though the hole
was greatly too small for admitting the finer and larger specimens, and
they, in consequence, fell back, disengaged from the harpoon, in the
attempt to land them, he succeeded in getting a good many of the smaller
ones. Old John Clark the gardener--far advanced in life at the time, and
seeing too imperfectly to discover the crevice which opened high amid
the obscurity of the loft--was in a perfect maze regarding the evil
influence that was destroying his apples. The harpooned individuals lay
scattered over the floor by scores; but the agent that had dispersed and
perforated them remained for weeks together an inscrutable mystery to
John. At length, however, there came a luckless morning, in which our
quondam companion lost hold, when busy at work, of the pointed stick;
and when John next entered his storehouse, the guilty harpoon lay
stretched across the harpooned apples. The discovery was followed up;
the culprit detected; and, on being closeted with his uncle the factor,
he communicated not only the details of his own special adventure, but
the particulars of ours also. And early next day there was a message
sent us by a safe and secret messenger, to the effect that we would be
all put in prison in the course of the week.

We were terribly frightened; so much so, that the strong point of our
position--the double-dyed guilt of the factor's nephew--failed to occur
to any of us; and we looked for only instant incarceration. I still
remember the intense feeling of shame I used to experience every time I
crossed my mother's door for the street--the agonizing, all-engrossing
belief that every one was looking at and pointing me out--and the
terror, when in my uncles'--akin to that of the culprit who hears from
his box the footsteps of the returning jury--that, having learned of my
offence, they were preparing to denounce me as a disgrace to an honest
family, on which, in the memory of man, no stain had before rested. The
discipline was eminently wholesome, and I never forgot it. It did seem
somewhat strange, however, that no one appeared to know anything about
our misdemeanour: the factor kept our secret remarkably well; but we
inferred he was doing so in order to pounce upon us all the more
effectually; and, holding a hasty council in the cave, we resolved that,
quitting our homes for a few weeks, we should live among the rocks till
the storm that seemed rising should have blown by.

M