legs became more luring, and every day I felt my fate
calling to me imperiously. Visions of the gallows rose up before me, and
with the hemp about my neck I saw stretched out the pitiless future of my
children, dark with disgrace and shame. I became afraid of myself, and
Bess went about with anxious face, privily beseeching my friends to
entice me into taking a vacation. Then, and at the last gasp, came the
thought that saved me: _Why not confiscate_? If their forays were
bootless, in the nature of things their forays would cease.

The first to enter my field thereafter was a man.

I was waiting for him--And, oh joy! it was the "Repeater" himself, smugly
complacent with knowledge of past success. I dropped the rifle
negligently across the hollow of my arm and went down to him.

"I am sorry to trouble you for those poppies," I said in my oiliest
tones; "but really, you know, I must have them."

He regarded me speechlessly. It must have made a great picture. It
surely was dramatic. With the rifle across my arm and my suave request
still ringing in my ears, I felt like Black Bart, and Jesse James, and
Jack Sheppard, and Robin Hood, and whole generations of highwaymen.

"Come, come," I said, a little sharply and in what I imagined was the
true fashion; "I am sorry to inconvenience you, believe me, but I must
have those poppies."

I absently shifted the gun and smiled. That fetched him. Without a word
he passed them over and turned his toes toward the fence, but no longer
casual and careless was his carriage, I nor did he stoop to pick the
occasional poppy by the way. That was the last of the "Repeater." I
could see by his eyes that he did not like me, and his back reproached me
all the way down the field and out of sight.

From that day the bungalow has been flooded with poppies. Every vase and
earthen jar is filled with them. They blaze on every mantel and run riot
through all the rooms. I present them to my friends in huge bunches, and
still the kind city folk come and gather more for me. "Sit down for a
moment," I say to the departing guest. And there we sit in the shade of
the porch while aspiring city creatures pluck my poppies and sweat under
the brazen sun. And when their arms are sufficiently weighted with my
yellow glories, I go down with the rifle over my arm and disburden them.
Thus have I become convinced that every situation has its compensations.

Confiscation was successful, so far as