“Who stole them, Harry?” demanded the disappointed fruit-grower.

The nephew hesitated a moment, and the question was repeated with more sternness.

“Robert Shuffles; Isaac Monroe was with him, but he didn’t take any of the peaches.”

“What is the matter with your head, Harry?” asked his uncle, when he observed him rubbing the place where the blow had fallen.

“Shuffles struck me and knocked me down, when I called out for you.”

“Did he?  Where is he now?”

“He and Monroe ran up the walk to the back of the garden.”

“That boy shall be taken care of,” continued Mr. Lowington, as he walked up the path towards the point where the marauders had entered.  “The Academy is fast becoming a nuisance to the neighborhood, because there is neither order nor discipline among the students.”

The thieves had escaped, and as it would be useless to follow them, Mr. Lowington went back to the house; but he was too much annoyed at the loss of his splendid peaches, which were to figure so prominently before the “Pomological,” to permit the matter to drop without further notice.

“Did he hurt you much, Harry?” asked Mr. Lowington as they entered the house.

“Not much, sir, though he gave me a pretty hard crack,” answered Harry.

“Did you see them when they came into the garden?”

“No, sir?  I was fixing my water-wheel in the brook, when I heard them at the tree.  I went up, and tried to prevent Shuffles from taking the peaches.  I caught hold of him, and pulled him away.  He said he couldn’t stop to lick me then, but he’d do it within twenty-four hours.  Then he hit me when I called for help.”

“The young scoundrel!  That boy is worse than a pestilence in any neighborhood.  Mr. Baird seems to have no control over him.”

Suddenly, and without any apparent reason, Mr. Lowington’s compressed lips and contracted brow relaxed, and his face wore its usual expression of dignified serenity.  Harry could not understand the cause of this sudden change; but his uncle’s anger had passed away.  The fact was, that Mr. Lowington happened to think, while his indignation prompted him to resort to the severest punishment for Shuffles, that he himself had been just such a boy as the plunderer of his cherished fruit.  At the age of fifteen he had been the pest of the town in which he resided.  His father was a very wealthy man, and resorted to many expedients to cure the boy of his vicious propensities.

Young Lowington had a taste for the sea, and his father finally procured a midshipman’s warrant for him to enter the navy.  The strict discipline of a ship of war proved to be the “one thing needful” for the reformation of the wild youth; and he not only became a steady young man, but a hard student and an accomplished officer.  The navy made a man of him, as it has of hundreds of the sons of rich men, demoralized by idleness and the absence of a reasonable ambition.