The following Saturday morning, Mrs. Marshall, going out to the barn
for a hatchet, heard voices on the other side of the partition.
Peeping through a crack, she saw a sight that confounded her.

Every boy in the neighbourhood seemed to be there, and every one was
making patchwork. One boy was dangling his feet over the manger,
several were perched on a ladder, and one was sitting cross-legged on
a huge pumpkin. Johnny was going around as Grand Inquisitor from one
to another. If a seam was puckered, he gave the unlucky seamstress
what they called a "hickey,"--a tremendous thump on the head with his
thumb and middle finger. If the stitches were big and uneven, he gave
two hickeys and a pinch, and one boy got half a dozen, because Johnny
said his dirty hands made the thread gray. Mrs. Marshall gathered that
it was some sort of secret society, and that they had signed an oath
in their own blood not to tell.

"Johnny is at the bottom of it," she thought, laughing as she went
back to the house. "He has set the other boys to sewing in order to
forestall them. Now they cannot tease him, should they hear of his
private quilt-piecing."

[Illustration]

Another week went by of peaceful, uninterrupted evenings, and every
night at bedtime Johnny counted out his tale of finished blocks with
a sigh of relief. On the second Saturday evening he disappeared
immediately after supper. It was nearly an hour later when he came
tumbling excitedly into the house.