ound some offender seated with his feet sticking out
through the holes.

On the opening day of school, there was a man in each of them. One was a
man who obstinately refused to go to meeting, and after being warned
several times was clapped into the bilboes by the tythingman. The other
was some poor vagrant who had tried to settle in the town, but because
he was needy and shiftless he had been warned out, and as he did not
go, was put in the stocks.

The school children gathered about them, seated on the hard boards, with
their feet sticking out through the holes in the stocks, and discussed
their crimes and punishment, and made bets as to the number of nails in
the soles of their shoes. William Munroe, the blacksmith, came over from
his shop with his leather apron on.

"Come, Sam, you want to get out of there, and sit in the seats with the
righteous. It's never too late for the sinner to repent."

"Oh, go away, Bill. Let me alone. It's bad enough to sit here in these
cussed stocks, till every bone in my body aches, and have the children
stare at me, without you coming over to poke fun at me. I'm sick of it."

"That's right! A change of heart will do you good. See you in meeting
next Sabbath."

The next day, Robert Harrington, the constable, drove up to the stocks
with his cart.

"See here, Bob. Let me out. I give in. I'll go to meeting twice a day
for the fifty-two Sabbaths in the year, and on lecture days and any
other days that they want me to go."

[Sidenote: VAGRANTS AND SINNERS]

"All right; I'll let you out, but they will expect an acknowledgment
from you of your wrong-doing, in meeting next Sabbath."

"Just let me out of these stocks, and I'll do anything they ask."

Mr. Harrington released him, and then turned to the vagrant and said,
"Come, old boy, you've got to move on. We can't have you on our hands."

He took him in his cart, carried him miles away, and dumped him in the
road, just as you would an old cat that you wanted to get rid of; and
warned him never to come back.

Next Sabbath the sinner made a "public relation" before the meeting, in
which he confessed his grievous sins and promised to amend.

My greatest friend was my cousin, Edmund Munroe, a sturdy, trustworthy
boy with great common sense.

Then there was Davy Fiske, a son of Dr. Fiske. Davy was a lean, wiry
fellow, not much of a boy for study, but full of knowledge of the
woods. He knew when every kind of bird came and departed