BENNIE crawled out of his bed that morning with his mind full of the thought of apples.

“The harvests are getting mellow!” so Jack Burnes had announced the day before, and every boy knows just what that means to all the boys who are so unfortunate as to have no harvest apple-tree to climb and shake. After the climbing and shaking comes the scrambling down and the picking out of the fairest and best, and then comes the stuffing of pockets and the gradual, though not very slow, process of transferring from the pockets to the stomach. To all such unfortunates it means an indescribable longing, an unutterable desire to climb somebody else’s harvest apple-tree! It means an uncontrollable appetite which only harvest apples can satisfy. You all know how Bennie felt. There was no apple-tree in his father’s garden; how could there be when there was no garden! The place which Bennie called home had no advantages in that direction, being two or three rooms in a rickety old tenement house. Now Bennie went to Sunday-school, and he had learned the Lord’s Prayer, and he never forgot to repeat it as he lay down at night upon his not very luxurious bed; and I think that Bennie understood what it meant when he prayed “Give us this day our daily bread,” for he had sometimes known what it was to want for daily bread, but when he repeated “Lead us not into temptation,” his ideas of that for which he asked were rather vague. That morning he started out with hair uncombed, face unwashed; with a ragged coat and battered hat and walked directly towards temptation in the shape of Mr. Vinton’s harvest-tree with its loaded limbs hanging over the wall. To be sure he knew that trespassers were threatened with the constable and the jail, but then he thought maybe some apples will have dropped over the wall into the road in the night, and if I get there first why “I’ll have them if there are any. What’s in the road belongs to folks as finds ’em first!” And so he hastened along until he stood under the overhanging branches. There were no “finds” on the ground, and as Bennie looked up into the tree the thought of climbing up the wall and filling his pockets came to him. Why not? There were plenty of apples; the Squire would never miss a few; as for getting caught, it was too early for any of the family to be about. That sign was meant for boys who wanted to carry off a lot of apples; he meant to take only a few. And so reasoning, dallying with temptation, poor Bennie was overcome!

Not more than five minutes later Bennie lay helpless upon the ground, half-buried under the broken branch and the fallen sign.

“It is a wonder you weren’t killed outright!” said the Squire’s man who came to pick him up. “As it is I guess the harvest apples and the Astrachans and the pippins, too, are safe from you for this year! Where do you live, youngster?”

A broken arm and a sprained ankle! not long in the doing, but what a long, weary time was the undoing!

“The little rascal! serves him right!” said Mr. Vinton when told of the accident. “Send Dr. Grant down to set the arm, and tell him to attend to the boy, but don’t let May hear of it. She will be in a worry if she gets hold of it.”

But when was there a case of suffering among the poor, especially in her vicinity, that May Vinton did not get hold of sooner or later? It was not many days before Ellen appeared at Bennie’s poor home with a basket of necessaries and delicacies for the boy’s comfort, and asking if there was anything further needed. In the basket was a quantity of great mellow-looking, yellow harvest apples; but when Bennie saw them he turned his face away and said, “Take them away! I don’t want to see any harvests, ever! It was good of Miss Vinton to send them, but I can’t bear them! It seems just as if they had printed all over them ‘Thief! thief!’”

Poor Bennie, his sin had found him out!