p on yer pants, and
don't wake Granny Cronk nor Pappy Lon!"

If it had not been that the boy pressed his fingers on the blanket, Flea
would have wondered if her brother had heard.

The lithe form had crept back to the ladder and had disappeared before
Flukey slipped quietly from his bed and drew on the blue-jeans overalls.
As he stole through the kitchen, he could hear the snorts of Granny
Cronk coming from the back room. The outside door stood partly open, and
without hesitation he passed through and closed it after him that the
wind might not slam it. Then he limped along under the shore trees, up a
little hill, and dropped out of sight into an open cavern, where Flea, a
candle in her hand, sat in semidarkness.

The cave had been the children's playground ever since they could
remember. Here they had come to weep over indignities heaped upon them
in childhood; here they had come in joy and in sorrow, and now, in
secret conclave in the early hours of the morning, they had come again.

"Ye're here!" said Flea in feverish haste. "I feared ye'd go to sleep
again."

"Nope; I allers come when ye want me, Flea."

"Did ye steal tonight?"

"Yep."

"What did ye get?"

The boy shuddered, and a strange, hunted expression came into his eyes.
"Spoons, knives, clothes, and things," said he; "and I'd ruther be tore
to pieces by wild bulls than ever steal again!"

His voice was toned with an unnatural ring. Wonderingly, Flea drew
closer to him, the candle dripping white, round drops hot on the brown
hand.

"But Pappy Lon says as how ye must steal, don't he?" she asked
presently.

"Yep, and as how you must go with Lem."

"I won't, I won't! Pappy Lon can kill me first!"

She said this in passionate anger; but, upon holding the candle close to
Flukey's face, she exclaimed:

"Fluke, don't look like that--it scares me!"

He was piercing the dark ends of the cave, his eyes colored like steel.
They were softened only by shots of brown, which ran like chain
lightning through them. The girl's gaze followed her brother's timidly;
for he looked ahead, as if he saw something that threatened her and him.
In spite of her soft touch, the boy looked on and on in his unyielding
fierceness at the fast approaching inevitable, which he had not been
able to stem. That day a change had been ordered in their lives, and it
had come upon him in the shape of a mental blow that hurt him far worse
than if Pappy Lon had flogged him throughou