r changed. The predominant trait in his whole
character had seemed to mould his face to itself unchangeably, as the
face of a hunting-dog is moulded to his speed and watchfulness.

"Don't Mr. Berry look just like an old miser?" a girl whispered to
Rebecca Thayer; then she started and blushed confusedly, for she
remembered suddenly that William Berry was said to be waiting upon
Rebecca, and she also remembered that Charlotte Barnard, who was
within hearing distance, was his niece.

Rebecca blushed, too. "I never thought of it," she said, in a
constrained voice.

"Well, I don't know as he does," apologized the girl. "I suppose I
thought of it because he's thin. I always had an idea that a miser
was thin." Then she slipped away, and presently whispered to another
girl what a mistaken speech she had made, and they put their heads
together with soft, averted giggles.

The girls had brought packages of luncheon in their baskets, which
they had removed to make space for the cherries, and left with Mrs.
Berry in the tavern. At noon they sent the young men for them, and
prepared to have dinner at a little distance from the trees where
they had been picking, where the ground was clean. William and Rose
also went up to the tavern, and Rose beckoned to Barney as she passed
him. "Don't you want to come?" she whispered, as he followed
hesitatingly; "there's something to carry."

When the party returned, Mrs. Berry was with them, and she and Rose
bore between them a small tub of freshly-fried hot doughnuts. Mrs.
Berry had utterly refused to trust it to the young men. "I know
better than to let you have it," she said, laughing. "You'd eat all
the way there, and there wouldn't be enough left to go round. Me and
Rose will carry it; it ain't very heavy." William and Barney each
bore two great jugs of molasses-and-water spiced with ginger.

Silas pulled himself up stiffly when he saw them coming; he had been
sitting upon the peaked rock whereon Ezra Ray had kept vigil with the
cow-bell. Full of anxiety had he been all day lest they should pick
from any except the four trees which he had set apart for them, and
his anxiety was greater since he knew that the best cherries were not
on those four trees. Silas sidled painfully towards his wife and
daughter; he peered over into the tub, but they swung it
remorselessly past him, even knocking his shin with its iron-bound
side.

"What you got there?" he demanded, huskily.

"Don't you sa