did not dare go farther. I went back into the
chamber, concealing myself, and waited to observe his return. He soon
made his appearance, eating an apple; there was a smile on his face, and
his pockets were protuberant.

Next day I proceeded to search the wagon-house cellar, but for some time
my search was in vain.

There was in the cellar a large box-stove, into which I had often
looked, but had seen only a mass of old brown paper and corn-husks. On
this day I went to the stove and pulled out the rubbish, when lo! in
the farther end I saw three salt boxes, all full of Pippins and August
Sweetings.

I was not long in emptying those boxes, but I wanted to leave in the
place of the apples a particularly exasperating bit of rhyme. I studied
and rhymed all that forenoon, and at last, with much mental travail, I
got out the following skit, which I left in the topmost box:

"He was a cunning cove
Who hid his hoard in the stove;
And he was so awful bright
That he went to it only by night.
But there was still another fellow
Whose head was not always on his pillow."

I knew by the sickly grin on Ad's face when we went out to milk the cows
next morning that my first effort at poetry had nauseated him; he could
not hold his head up all day, to look me in the face, without the same,
sheepish, sick look.

Where to put my next hoard was a question over which I pondered long. I
tried the hay-mow and several old sleighs set away for the summer, but
Addison was now on my trail and speedily relieved me of my savings.

There were many obstacles to the successful concealment of apples. If I
were to choose an unfrequented spot, the others, who were always on the
lookout, would be sure to spy out my goings to and fro. It was
necessary, I found, that the hoard should be placed where I could visit
it as I went about my ordinary business, without exciting suspicion.

We had often to go into the granary after oats and meal, and the place
that I at last hit on was a large bin of oats. I put my apples in a bag,
and buried them to a depth of over two feet in the oats in one corner of
the bin. I knew that Addison and Halse would look among the oats, but I
did not believe that they would dig deeply enough to find the apples,
and my confidence was justified.

It was a considerable task to get at my hoard to put apples into it, or
to get them out; but the sense of exultation which I felt, as days and
weeks passed and