ow any better. But if you were
to do such things now, what _should_ we say? Your soul-voice would
tell you it was wrong, and it would be wrong.

My soul-voice talked to me, and I was learning to listen to it. I was
not in the habit of telling lies; I had been hurried and frightened
into this one, and now it seemed as if I could not stop saying it any
more than a ball can stop rolling down hill.

It was dreadful. I had to lie there on mother's bed and think about
it. I could not go out of doors, or even walk about the room. Fel had
lain in her pretty blue chamber day after day, too sick to eat
anything but broths and gruel; but then her conscience was easy. I
wasn't sick, and could have as many nice things to eat as the rest of
the family; still I was wretched.

My little friends came to see me, and were very sorry for me. I was
glad to be remembered; but every time I heard the door open, I
trembled for fear some one was going to say "hatchet."

And when I was alone again I would turn my face so I could watch the
little clock on the mantel. It ticked with a far-away, dreamy sound,
like a child talking in its sleep, and somehow it had always one story
to tell, and never any other;--"You've told--a lie;--you've told--a
lie."

"Well," thought I, "I know it; but stop plaguing me."

There was a pretty picture on the clock door of a little girl, with
her apron full of flowers. It was to this little girl that I
whispered, "Well, I know it; but you stop plaguing me." She went right
on just the same,--"You've told--a lie; you've told--a lie." I turned
my face to the wall to get rid of her, but always turned it back
again, for there was a strange charm about that dreadful little girl.
I could tell you now just how she was dressed, and which way she bent
her head with the wreath of flowers on it. You have noticed the old
clock in Ruth's room at grandpa's? That's the one. I never see it now
but its slow tick-tock calls to mind my sad experience with the
hatchet.

Days passed. I was doing my first real thinking. Up to that time I had
never kept still long enough to think. It was some comfort to draw the
sheet over my head, and make up faces at myself.

"You've told a lie, Mag Parlin. Just 'cause your afraid of getting
scolded at for taking the hatchet. You're a little lie-girl. They
don't believe anything what you say. God don't believe anything what
you say. He saw you plain as could be when you cut your foot, and
heard y