Theodora, felt much disturbed about him.

Late in the night (it seemed to me that it must be nearly morning) I was
wakened by Halse coming into our room. He crept in stealthily and
undressed very quietly; but sleepy as I was, I heard him first muttering
and then whistling softly to himself, in what appeared to me a rather
curious manner. But I did not speak to him and soon dropped asleep
again.

He was sleeping heavily when I got up in the morning. I did not wake
him; and I noticed that his clothes and boots were very muddy and wet,
for it had rained during the latter part of the night.

When we sat down to breakfast, he had not come down-stairs; and the Old
Squire went up to our room. What he learned, or what he said to Halse,
we did not ascertain. At noon Gram said that Halse was not well; but he
was at the supper table that night.

As I had heard about the melon money I asked him that evening, after we
had gone up-stairs, if he could let me have the money which I had
borrowed of Theodora and Ellen, for him. I said nothing about my own
loan to him, although I wanted the money. He made me no reply; two or
three nights afterwards I mentioned the matter again; for I felt
responsible, after a manner, for the girls' money.

"I hain't got no money!" he snapped out, with very ungrammatical
shortness.

"Oh, I thought you had three dollars and a half," I observed.

"Well, I hain't," he said, angrily.

I said no more; but after awhile, he told me that he had set off to come
home from the town-house, but stopped to play at "pitching cents" with
some boys at the Corners, and that while there, he had either lost the
money out of his pocket, or else it had been stolen from him.

I was less inclined to doubt this story than the one about the seed
corn; for I had heard rumors of gambling, in a small way, at the
Corners, by a certain clique of loafers there. It was said, too, that
despite the stringent "liquor law," the hustling parties were provided
with intoxicants. I had little doubt that Halstead had parted with his
money in some such way. I recollected how odd his behavior had been
after coming home that night; and although I could scarcely believe such
a thing at first, I yet began to surmise that he had been induced to
drink liquor of some kind.

A few nights after town-meeting, we lost five or six boxes of honey;
some rogue, or rogues, came into the garden and drew the boxes out of
the hives. The only clue to the t