“He lied! the young villain!  He will catch it for this.”

“I would not have let him come with me only for that.  I asked him twice over if you were willing, and he said you were.”

“You ought to have known better than to believe him,” interposed the man who was with Mr. Spicer.

Bobby had some reason for believing him.  The fact that Tom had reformed ought to have entitled him to some consideration, and our hero gave him the full benefit of the declaration.  To have explained this would have taken more time than he could spare; besides, it was “a great moral question,” whose importance Mr. Spicer and his companion would not be likely to apprehend; so he made a short story of it, and resumed his walk, thankful that he had got rid of Tom.

Mr. Spicer and his friend, after fastening the horse to the fence, went to the woods in search of Tom.

Bobby reached the station just in time to take the cars, and in a moment was on his way to the city.

CHAPTER XV.

IN WHICH BOBBY GETS INTO A SCRAPE, AND TOM SPICER TURNS UP AGAIN.

Bobby had a poorer opinion of human nature than ever before.  It seemed almost incredible to him that words so fairly spoken as those of Tom Spicer could be false.  He had just risen from a sick bed, where he had had an opportunity for long and serious reflection.  Tom had promised fairly, and Bobby had every reason to suppose he intended to be a good boy.  But his promises had been lies.  He had never intended to reform, at least not since he had got off his bed of pain.  He was mortified and disheartened at the failure of this attempt to restore him to himself.

Like a great many older and wiser persons than himself, he was prone to judge the whole human family by a single individual.  He did not come to believe that every man was a rascal, but, in more general terms, that there is a great deal more rascality in this world than one would be willing to believe.

With this sage reflection, he dismissed Tom from his mind, which very naturally turned again to the air castle which had been so ruthlessly upset.  Then his opinion of “the rest of mankind” was reversed; and he reflected that if the world were only peopled by angels like Annie Lee, what a pleasant place it would be to live in.  She could not tell a lie, she could not use bad language, she could not steal, or do any thing else that was bad; and the prospect was decidedly pleasant.  It was very agreeable to turn from Tom to Annie, and in a moment his air castle was built again, and throned on clouds of gold and purple.  I do not know what impossible things he imagined, or how far up in the clouds, he would have gone, if the arrival of the train at the city had not interrupted his thoughts, and pitched him down upon the earth again.