A broad grin overspread Mr. Peck’s face for a moment; then he said, with becoming gravity: 

“I suppose you’ve got the rights of it, Nat, but seems to me it’s a rather mean trick.”

Nat had begun to think so, too, by this time, but he refused to listen to the promptings of his better nature and said nothing.

“We’ll come right over with the team for them,” said Mr. Peck.

And he and Al at once harnessed up, and placing a large, strong coop in the wagon, drove over to the Bascom place.

“I should think you’d have your geese tame enough to drive,” said Nat; but the Pecks paid no attention to the remark.

Mr. Peck pulled his cap well down over his eyes, put on a pair of gloves and entered the hen-house.

The ice had by this time melted from their backs and wings, and those thirteen geese were the liveliest flock of birds imaginable.

“Thirteen of them.  All right!” said Mr. Peck, passing out the last struggling bird to his son, who clapped it into the coop.

A dollar and thirty cents was handed to Nat by Al’s father, with the cutting remark: 

“There’s your money, young man!  I hope you won’t grow up to be as mean as you bid fair to be now.”

Nat accepted the money, considerably shame-faced, and followed the Pecks back to their place to see them unload the geese; but he was disappointed, in that they were not unloaded, Al flinging some corn into the coop, which was allowed to remain in the wagon.

“Aren’t you going to put them into the pen again?” inquired Nat, mildly.

“They’ve never been in a pen, that I know of,” replied Mr. Peck, with a queer smile.

“I don’t believe they’d get along very well with any other geese,” added Al, reflecting his father’s broad grin.

“Why—­” began Nat, at last beginning to believe that there was something very peculiar about the whole affair.

“Why, it is just here!” explained Al.  “They weren’t my geese at all, till I bought them of you.  They were a flock of wild ones, that got belated in the storm last evening, I suppose.  I should think you’d have known them by their call.  For once in your life, Nat Bascom, you’ve over-reached yourself.  I shall clear as much as seventy-five cents on each of those birds.”

Nat made for home at once, followed by shouts of laughter from the Pecks, father and son.  He felt as though everything stable in the world had been knocked from under him.

Although he never mentioned the matter to his father or mother, the story reached them through other sources, for it soon spread throughout the community, and neither Mr. nor Mrs. Bascom had the least sympathy for him.

All that winter the nickname of “Goose” clung to him, and perhaps the jeers of his fellows did him some good; at least, it made a lasting impression on his mind, and when he was tempted to perform a mean act again, he could not fail to remember how he had once over-reached himself.