playing truant, and to carry him
back to receive the customary walloping.

When he was quite near home, he said,--

"Joe, I wonder if any body's found that old pitcher."

He stooped down, thrust his arm under the stone steps, and withdrew
the identical piece of earthenware he had deposited there just four
years ago.

Having rinsed and filled it at the pump, he walked into his mother's
house, and found her seated in her accustomed arm chair. She looked
at him for a minute, recognized him, screamed, and exclaimed,--

"Why, Bob! where _have_ you been? What have you been doing?"

"Gettin' that pitcher o' water," answered Bob, setting it upon the
table. "I always obey orders--you told me to be four years about it,
and I was."

THE DEACON'S HORSE.

As you turn a corner of the road, passing the base of a huge hill of
granite all overgrown with ivy and scrub oak, the deacon's house comes
full in sight. It is a quaint old edifice of wood, whose architecture
proclaims it as belonging to the ante-revolutionary period. Innocent
of paint, its dingy shingles and moss-grown roof assimilated with the
gray tint of the old stone fences and the granite boulders that rise
from the surrounding pasture land. The upper story projects over the
lower one, and in the huge double door that gives entrance to the hall
there are traces of Indian bullets and tomahawks, reminiscences of
that period when it was used as a blockhouse and served as a fortalice
to protect the inhabitants of the surrounding district, who fled
hither for protection from the vengeful steel and lead of the
aborigines. On one side of the mansion is an extensive apple orchard
of great antiquity, through which runs a living stream, whose babble
in the summer solstice, mingled with the hum of insects, is the most
refreshing sound to which the ear can listen. On the other side is one
of those old-fashioned wells, whose "old oaken bucket" rises to the
action of a "sweep." Two immemorial elm trees, in a green old age,
shadow the trim shaven lawn in front. Opposite the house, on the other
side of the road, is a vast barn, whose open doors, in the latter part
of July, afford a glimpse of a compact mass of English hay, destined
for the sustenance of the cattle in the dreary months of winter. We
must not forget the huge wood pile, suggestive of a cheerful fireside
in the long winter evenings.

But where is the deacon's horse? Last year, and for the past twenty
years p