ly, for as a boy I had other
more trivial interests chiefly in mind. I recall that the old gentleman
used frequently to exclaim, "You boys must begin to read the
Constitution. Next after the Bible, the Constitution ought to be read in
every family in our land."

I have to confess that at this particular time I was much less
interested in the Constitution than in the luscious fall apples out in
the orchard, and the rivalry to secure them.

"Have you got a hoard?" was the question which, at about this time,
began to be whispered among us.

At first the query was a novelty to me; my thoughts went back to a story
which I had once read concerning a horde of robbers on the steppes of
Central Asia. In this case, however, the thing referred to was a hoard
of early apples. I had gone to the Edwardses on some domestic errand; it
was directly after breakfast, and Thomas, who was putting a new tooth
in the "loafer rake," had set a fine, mellow "wine-sap," from which he
had taken a bite, on the shed sill beside him. "Got a pile of those
fellows in my hoard," he remarked, with a boastful wink. "Have you got a
hoard down at your house?"

"Tom is always bragging about his hoard," said Catherine, who had come
to the kitchen door, to hear any news which I might have to impart. "He
thinks nobody can have a hoard but himself."

"She's got one," Tom whispered to me, as Catherine turned away. "She's
awful sly about it, for fear I'll find it, and I think I know where it
is. I'll bet she has gone to it now," he added, taking another bite; and
jumping up, he peeped into the kitchen. "She _has_" he whispered to me.
"Come on, _still_; don't say a word and we will catch her."

I remember feeling a certain faint sense of repugnance to engaging in a
hunt for Catherine's apple preserve; but I followed Tom around the
wood-shed, past a corn-crib, and then around to the north side of the
barn.

"Now sneak along beside the stone wall here," said Tom. "Keep down.
Don't get in sight."

We crawled along in cover of the stone wall and came down opposite the
garden and orchard. Tom then peeped stealthily over.

"There she is!" he whispered, "right out there by the Isabella grape
trellis; keep still now, she's going back to the house. We'll find her
hoard."

We searched about the grape trellis and over the entire garden for ten
minutes or more, but found no secret preserve of apples.

As we returned to the wood-shed, Kate came out, smiling disdai