knew the constables--they called 'em constables in those times--were
after him, and that he'd be hung by somebody else if he didn't? No?
Here's a ghost story for you, then, and I hope it will be a warning to
you all never to take anything that doesn't belong to you, 'specially
apples.

"You see, Billy Evans and I were staying with our folks at the hotel in
Bramblewood that summer, and about two miles away was Pop Robins's farm.
He used to bring eggs and chickens and vegetables and fruit to the
hotel; and, oh my! wasn't he stingy?--you'd better believe it. He
wouldn't even give you two or three blackberries, and if you asked him
for an apple, he'd tremble all over. A reg'lar old miser _he_ was, with
lots of money, and a bully apple orchard. 'Let's go there some night and
help ourselves,' says Billy Evans, one day. 'Dogs,' says I. 'Only one,'
says he; 'I know him, and so do you--old Snaggletooth; I gave him almost
all the meat we took for crab bait the day we didn't catch any.' 'All
right,' says I.

"But when the night we'd agreed on came, Billy had cousins--girls--down
from New York, and he had to stay home and entertain them. I don't care
much for girls myself, and I was afraid they might want me to help
entertain them too, so I made up my mind to go down to Pop Robins's
alone. It was a splendid night; the moon shone so bright that it was
almost as light as day. I scudded along, whistling away, until I got
within half a mile of the orchard, and then I stopped my noise and
walked as softly as possible, till I came to the first apple-tree. I
shinned up that tree in a jiffy (old Snaggletooth didn't put in an
appearance), filled my bag with jolly fat apples, and slid down again.
But when I came to lift the bag up on my shoulder, I found it was awful
heavy to carry so far, and I was just agoing to dump some of the apples
out, when I remembered all of a sudden that if I cut across the meadow
to the plank-road, I could get back to the hotel in a little more than
half the time it would take to go the way I came.

"So I shouldered my load, and was nearly across the meadow before I
thought of the haunted barn at the end of it. It wasn't a nice thing to
remember; but I wasn't agoing to turn back, ghost or no ghost, and I
tried to whistle again, when all at once that thing Al Smith was singing
just now popped into my head, and says I to myself, 'That's so, Charles
F. Bennet; you and your chums may think it's great fun to help
y