One evening he was playing with them when his father entered the room.

"What have you there?" he asked in astonishment.

"Screw-nuts," John answered confidently.

"Where did you get them from?"

"I found them."

"Found them? Where?"

"On the street."

"In one place?"

"No, in several—by walking down the middle of the street and looking about."

"Look here! I don't believe that. You are lying. Come in here. I have something to say to you." The something was a caning.

"Will you confess now?"

"I have found them on the street."

The cane was again plied in order to make him "confess." What should he confess? Pain, and fear that the scene would continue indefinitely, forced the following lie from him:

"I have stolen them."

"Where?"

Now he did not know to which part of a carriage the screw-nuts belonged, but he guessed it was the under part.

"Under the carriages."

"Where?"

His fancy suggested a place, where many carriages used to stand together. "By the timber-yard opposite the lane by the smith's."

This specification of the place lent an air of probability to his story. His father was now certain that he had elicited the truth from him. He continued:

"And how could you get them off merely with your fingers?"

He had not expected this question, but his eye fell on his father's tool-box.

"With a screw-driver."

Now one cannot take hold of nuts with a screw-driver, but his father was excited, and let himself be deceived.

"But that is abominable! You are really a thief. Suppose a policeman had come by."

John thought for a moment of quieting him by telling him that the whole affair was made up, but the prospect of getting another caning and no supper held him mute. When he had gone to bed in the evening, and his mother had come and told him to say his evening prayer, he said in a pathetic tone and raising his hand:

"May the deuce take me, if I have stolen the screw-nuts."

His mother looked long at him, and then she said, "You should not swear so."

The corporal punishment had sickened and humbled him; he was angry with God, his parents, and especially his brothers, who had not spoken up for him, though they knew the real state of the case. That evening he did not say his prayers, but he wished that the house would take fire without his having to light it. And then to be called a thief!

From that time he was suspected, or rather his bad reputation was confirmed, and he felt long the sting of the memory of a charge of theft which he had not committed. Another time he caught himself in a lie, but through an inadvertency which for a long time he could not explain. This incident is related for the consideration of parents. A school-fellow with his sister came one Sunday morning in the early part of the year to him and asked him whether he would accompany them to the Haga Park. He said, "Yes," but he must first ask his mother's permission. His father had gone out.