no lies!"

The son unbuttoned his coat, and showed his empty watch-fob. Then he
gave an account of the robbery, not strictly correct in all its details,
but near enough for his father to know, without discovering inaccuracies
at a later day. The hickory-stick was shaken once or twice during the
recital, but it did not fall upon the culprit--though this correction
(so the gossip of the neighborhood ran) had more than once been
administered within the previous ten years. As Alfred Barton told his
story, it was hardly a case for anger on the father's part, so he took
his revenge in another way.

"This comes o' your races and your expensive company," he growled, after
a few incoherent sniffs and snarls; "but I don't lose my half of the
horse. No, no! I'm not paid till the money's been handed over.
Twenty-five dollars, remember!--and soon, that I don't lose the use of
it too long. As for _your_ money and the watch, I've nothing to do with
them. I've got along without a watch for eighty-five years, and I never
wore as smart a coat as that in my born days. Young men understood how
to save, in my time."

Secretly, however, the old man was flattered by his son's love of
display, and enjoyed his swaggering air, although nothing would have
induced him to confess the fact. His own father had come to Pennsylvania
as a servant of one of the first settlers, and the reverence which he
had felt, as a boy, for the members of the Quaker and farmer aristocracy
of the neighborhood, had now developed into a late vanity to see his own
family acknowledged as the equals of the descendants of the former.
Alfred had long since discovered that when he happened to return home
from the society of the Falconers, or the Caswells, or the Carsons, the