I have been in the back bedroom up-stairs all the afternoon, and I am expecting father every minute. It was just after one o\'clock when he told me to come up-stairs with him, and just then Mr. Thompson came to get him to go down town with him, and father said I\'d have to excuse him for a little while and don\'t you go out of that room till I come back. So I excused him, and he hasn\'t come back yet; but I\'ve opened one of the pillows and stuffed my clothes full of feathers, and I don\'t care much how soon he comes back now.

It\'s an awful feeling to be waiting up-stairs for your father, and to know that you have done wrong, though you really didn\'t mean to do so much wrong as you have done. I am willing to own that nobody ought to take anybody\'s clothes when he\'s in swimming, but anyhow they began it first, and I thought just as much as could be that the clothes were theirs.

The real boys that are to blame are Joe Wilson and Amzi Willetts. A week ago Saturday Tom McGinnis and I went in swimming down at the island. It\'s a beautiful[Pg 140] place. The island is all full of bushes, and on one side the water is deep, where the big boys go in, and on the other it is shallow, where we fellows that can\'t swim very much where the water is more than two feet deep go in. While Tom and I were swimming, Joe and Amzi came and stole our clothes, and put them in their boat, and carried them clear across the deep part of the river. We saw them do it, and we had an awful time to get the clothes back, and I think it was just as mean.

Tom and I said we\'d get even with them, and I know it was wrong, because it was a revengeful feeling, but anyhow we said we\'d do it; and I don\'t think revenge is so very bad when you don\'t hurt a fellow, and wouldn\'t hurt him for anything, and just want to play him a trick that is pretty nearly almost quite innocent. But I don\'t say we did right, and when I\'ve done wrong I\'m always ready to say so.

Well, Tom and I watched, and last Saturday we saw Joe and Amzi go down to the island, and go in swimming on the shallow side; so we waded across and sneaked down among the bushes, and after a while we saw two piles of clothes. So we picked them up and ran away with them. The boys saw us, and made a terrible noise; but we sung out that they\'d know now how it felt to have your clothes carried off, and we waded back across the river, and carried[Pg 141] the clothes up to Amzi\'s house, and hid them in his barn, and thought that we\'d got even with Joe and Amzi, and taught them a lesson which would do them a great deal of good, and would make them good and us............