continued:

"I see plainly how it is. It is the consequence of going out in the
evening with the boys, which I must hereafter forbid. I have been
willing that you should go out occasionally in the evening, because I
thought it might be better for you than so much reading. But you have
now betrayed my confidence, and I am more than ever satisfied that
boys should spend their evenings at home, trying to improve their
minds. You are guilty of an act that is quite flagrant, although it
may have been done thoughtlessly. You should have known better after
having received so much instruction at home."

"I did know better," was Benjamin's frank confession, determined to
make a clean breast of it.

"And that makes your guilt so much the greater. Will you learn a
lesson from this, and never do the like again?"

"I promise that I never will."

Thus frankly Benjamin confessed his wrong-doing; and, in mature life,
he often referred to it as his "_first wrong act_" from which he
learned a lesson for life. It was another way of _paying too dear for
a whistle_. What the whistle was to him at seven, the wharf of stones
was to him at twelve years of age--sport. The first was innocent
sport, however; the last was guilty.

It appears that the workmen missed their stones when they first
reached the spot in the morning, and soon discovered them nicely laid
into a wharf. The proprietor was indignant, and set about learning who