Kit looked after his retreating figure somewhat dubiously.  It was one thing to act on the impulse of the moment and quite another to face the consequences.  Now that the prisoner was safe in the corn-crib, she wondered somewhat uneasily just what her father would say when he found out what she had done to protect the berry patch.  But just now he was safe in the upper orchard with old Mr. Weaver, deep in apple culture, and she thought she could get rid of the trespasser before he returned.

Mrs. Gorham was in the kitchen putting up peaches.  Her voice came with droning, old-fashioned sweetness through the screen door.

    “When I can read my title dear
      To mansions in the skies,
     I’ll bid farewell to every fear,
      And wipe my weeping eyes.”

Kit slipped around the side drive behind the house out to the hill road.  Mr. Hicks would have to come from Gilead Green in this direction, and here she sat on one of the high entrance posts, waiting and cogitating.

The woodbine that clambered over the two high, white posts was still green, but scrambling along the ground were wild blackberry runners just turning a rich brown crimson.

The minutes passed and still Mr. Hicks failed to appear.  If Kit could have visualized his journey hither, she might have beheld him, lingering here and there along the country roads, stopping to tell the news to any neighbor who might be working out his road tax in the lull of the season between haying and harvest time.  Beside him sat Elvira, his youngest, drinking in every word with tense appreciation of the novelty.  It was the first chance Mr. Hicks had had to make an arrest during his term of office, and as a special test and reward of diligence, Elvira had been permitted to come along and behold the climax with her own eyes.  But the twenty minutes stretched out into nearly an hour’s time and more, and Kit’s heart sank when she beheld her father strolling leisurely down the orchard path, just as Mr. Hicks hove in sight.

Mr. Weaver hobbled beside him, smiling contentedly.

“Well, I guess we’ve got ’em licked this time, Jerry,” he chuckled.  “If there’s a bug or a moth that can stand that leetle dose of mine, I’ll eat the whole apple crop myself.”

“Still, I’ll feel better satisfied when Howard gets here, and gives an expert opinion,” Mr. Robbins rejoined.  “He wrote he expected to be here to-day without fail.”

“Well, of course you’re entitled to your opinion, Jerry,” Mr. Weaver replied doubtfully.  “But I never did set any store at all by these here government chaps with their little satchels and tree doctor books.  I’d just as soon walk up to an apple tree and hand it a blue pill or a shin plaster.”

Kit slid hastily down from the post as Mr. Hicks’ black and white horse turned in from the road.

“Hello,” he called out, cheerily.  “How be you, Jerry?  Howdy, Philemon?  Miss Kit here tells me you’ve been harboring a fruit thief, and you’ve caught him.”