nfully.

"Found it?" she asked us,--a question which I felt to be an embarrassing
one. With an air of triumph, she then displayed a fine yellow Sweet
Harvey. "Oh, don't you think you are cunning?" muttered Tom. "But I'll
find your hoard all the same."

"Let me know when you do," replied Kate, with a provoking laugh.

"Oh, you'll know when I find it," said Tom. "I'll take what there is in
it. That was all a blind--her going out to the grape-vine," he remarked
to me, as Kate turned away about her work. "She went down there on
purpose to fool us, and get us to hunt there for nothing."

I went home quite fully informed in regard to the ethics of
apple-hoards. The code was simple; it consisted in keeping one's own
hoard undiscovered, and in finding and robbing those of others.

"Have you got an apple-hoard?" I asked Addison, as soon as I reached
home.

For all reply, he winked his left eye to me.

"Doad's got one, too," he said, after I had had time to comprehend his
stealth.

"You didn't tell me," I remarked.

Addison laughed. "That would be great strategy!" he observed,
derisively, "to tell of it! But I only made mine day before yesterday. I
thought the early apples were beginning to get good enough to have a
hoard. I want to get a big stock on hand for September town-meeting," he
added. "I mean to carry a bushel or two, and peddle them out for a cent
apiece. The Old Squire put me up to that last year, and I made two
dollars and ninety cents. That's better than nothing."

"Are you really contented here? Are you homesick, ever?" I asked him.

"Well," replied Ad, judicially, after weighing my question a little, "it
isn't, of course, as it would have been with me if it had not been for
the War, and father had lived. I should be at school now and getting
ahead fast. But it is of no use to think of that; father and mother are
both in their graves, and here I am, same as you and Doad are. We have
got to make our way along somehow and get what education we can. It is
of no use to be discontented. We are lucky to have so good a place to go
to. I like here pretty well, for I like to be in the country better, on
the whole, than in the city. Things are sort of good and solid here. The
only drawback is that there isn't much chance to go to school; but after
this year, I hope to go to the Academy, down at the village, ten or
twelve weeks every season."

"Then you mean to try to get an education?" I asked, for it looked to