As he thought of this two large tears rolled down his sunburnt cheeks.

“What is it, my boy?”

He brushed them away hastily.

“Father,” said he, “I’ve been a sneak; but I won’t be a coward.  I was going with the boys last night.”

“Ah!”

“Yes.  I should have gone if it hadn’t been for the dog, and the cat, and—­all the rest of them.  ’Twasn’t any goodness of mine that kept me at home.”

His father was silent.

“I wish you’d say something, father,” cried poor Bert, impatiently.  “I s’pose you don’t think I’m worth flogging; but”—­

“My dear boy,” said his father, “I knew your footsteps in the shed last night.  I knew perfectly well who was hidden in the old closet.”

“Why didn’t you say so?” inquired astonished Bert, tremblingly.

“Because I preferred to let you go.  I thought, if my boy wanted to deceive me, he should, at least, imagine that he had that pleasure.”

“O father!”

“Yes, you should have gone, Bert.  Very likely I might have gone with you; but you would not have known it.”

Bert hadn’t a word to say.

“I pitied you, too.  I knew that, after the fun was over, there must come the settling with your conscience.  I was sure you had a conscience, Bert.”

The boy tried to speak, but no words came.

“I was disappointed in you, Bert.  I was very much disappointed in you.”

Down went Bert’s head into his hands.

“But now,” continued his father, placing one hand upon his shoulder, “now I have my honest boy again, and I am proud of him.  I do consider you worth a dozen floggings, Bert; but I have no disposition to give them to you.”

Bert wrung his father’s hand and rushed out into the rain.  Cuff came running to meet him, and Prince barked with pleasure at his approach.  Billy whistled and sung in his cage above, and old Snow’s voice was heard in the field close by.

Bert loved them and they knew it.  It was some minutes, however, before he noticed them now; and when he did, it was not in his accustomed merry way.

“Just like the monitors at school,” said he, seriously.  “Making such a fuss that a fellow can’t go wrong, if he wants to.”  And he took Cuff up in his lap, and patted Prince’s shaggy coat.

Bert’s monitors still watch him with affectionate interest; but never again, I am happy to say, has he felt the least inclination to disturb their midnight slumbers.

A MORNING THOUGHT

  With every rising of the sun
  Think of your life as just begun.

  The past has shrivelled and buried deep,
  All yesterdays.  There let them sleep,

  Nor seek to summon back one ghost
  Of that innumerable host.

  Concern yourself with but to-day,
  Woo it, and teach it to obey

  Your will and wish.  Since time began
  To-day has been the friend of man;