ots, he would not have been tempted to steal them.
Through earnestly desiring what did not belong to him, he was led not
only to commit a great sin himself, but to be the means of leading a
fellow-creature into sin also. Fred Morris would not have thought of
robbing the apricot-tree had not Tom put it into his head. In the Bible
we are frequently charged not to lead our brother into sin; and heavy
punishments are denounced against him who shall cause another to do
evil."

"I used to think, grandmother," observed Ned, "that the tenth
commandment must be the least important of all; I did not suppose there
could be any very great harm in merely wishing for what belongs to
another person; but I shall never think so in future."

Several weeks passed away, and the weather began to grow cold and
winterly. Ned could not help sighing when he saw his grandmother
suffering from the cold, and recollected that she had no cloak to keep
her warm, and would have none all the winter.

He sometimes sighed, too, as he looked at the apricot-tree, whose
branches were now dead and withering; and so did Tom. Both the boys
agreed that it had better be cut down, and taken away entirely.

"How I wish," exclaimed Tom, "that we had another to put in its place!"

"So do I," rejoined Ned; "but apricot-trees, I believe, are very dear to
buy. A gardener my father used to work for, and who is now dead, gave me
this. I fear there is no chance of our ever getting another."

"How I do wish I was rich!" cried Tom; "I would give you an
apricot-tree, and all manner of things besides. I should like to be as
rich as our Squire best; but it would do to be as rich as Farmer
Tomkyns. Oh, if I had only half as many sheep, and pigs, and cows, and
haystacks, as he has, how happy I should be! Don't you wish you had some
of the Squire's or Farmer Tomkyns's riches, Ned?"

"No," replied Ned, "I don't; because we ought not to wish for other
people's things."

He then told Tom all that he could remember of what his grandmother had
said to him about the sin of coveting what does not belong to us; and
that doing so, besides breaking one commandment, is very likely to lead
to the breaking of others also.

"But," asked Tom, "how is it possible to help longing sometimes for
things we have not got, and yet see other people have?"

"We may not," said Ned's grandmother, who had come out to call the boys
in to tea, and had overheard the latter part of their conversatio