kindly explain how you came by it?"

"Well, sir, we--I--put it together."

"Have you any objection to stating, Hugh, in plain English, that you made
it?"

"No, sir, I suppose you might say that I made it."

"Or that it was intended for a row-boat?"

Here was the time to appeal, to force a decision as to what constituted a
row-boat.

"Perhaps it might be called a row-boat, sir," I said abjectly.

"Or that, in direct opposition to my wishes and commands in forbidding
you to have a boat, to spend your money foolishly and wickedly on a whim,
you constructed one secretly in the woodshed, took out a part of the back
partition, thus destroying property that did, not belong to you, and had
the boat carted this morning to Logan's Pond?" I was silent, utterly
undone. Evidently he had specific information.... There are certain
expressions that are, at times, more than mere figures of speech, and now
my father's wrath seemed literally towering. It added visibly to his
stature.

"Hugh," he said, in a voice that penetrated to the very corners of my
soul, "I utterly fail to understand you. I cannot imagine how a son of
mine, a son of your mother who is the very soul of truthfulness and
honour--can be a liar." (Oh, the terrible emphasis he put on that word!)