dn't grow out o' green wood the way
he was pretendin'. It wasn't two weeks before he takes me down to the
basement one night when he comes home, an' he owns up.

"'Peleg,' he says, 'I've got to tell somebody, an' God knows maybe it'll
be you that'll hev to tell her. I've stole fifty-four dollars out o' the
tray in the retail department,' says he, 'an' to-day they found me out.
They wasn't no fuss made. Lovett, the assistant cashier, is the only one
that knows. He took me aside quiet,' Mr. Loneway says, 'an' I made a
clean breast. I said what I took it for. He's a married man himself, an'
he told me if I'd make it up in three days, he'd fix it so's nobody
should know. The cashier's off for a week. In three days he's comin'
back. But they might as well ask me to make up fifty-four hundred. I've
got enough to keep on these three days so's she won't know,' he says,
'an' after that--'

"He hunched out his arms, an' I'll never forget his face.

"I says, 'Mr. Loneway, sir,' I says, 'chuck it. Tell her the whole thing
an' give 'em back what you got left, an' do your best.'

"He turned on me like a crazy man.

"'Don't talk to me like that,' he says fierce. 'You don't know what
you're sayin',' he says. 'No man does till he has this happen to him.
The judge on the bench that'll send me to jail for it, he won't know
what he's judgin'. My God--_my God!_' he says, leanin' up against the
door o' the furnace room, 'to see her sick like this--an' _needin'
things_--when she give herself to me to take care of!'

"Course there wa'n't no talkin' to him. An' the nex' night an' the nex'
he come home bringin' her truck just the same. Once he even hed her a
bunch o' pinks. Seems though he was doin' the worst he could.

"The pinks come at the end of the second day of the three days the
assistant cashier had give him to pay the money back in. An' two things
happened that night. I was in the kitchen helpin' him wash up the dishes
while the doctor was in the room with Mis' Loneway. An' when the doctor
come out o' there into the kitchen, he shuts the door. I see right off
somethin' was the matter. He took Mr. Loneway off to the back window,
an' I rattled 'round with the dishes an' took on not to notice. Up until
when the doctor goes out--an' then I felt Mr. Loneway's grip on my arm.
I looked at him, an' I knew. She wasn't goin' to get well. He just
lopped down on the chair like so much sawdust, an' put his face down in
his arm, the way a scho