While I picked and filled and emptied my basket I began to reason with myself and to think that after all Mr Brownsmith would not be so very angry with me if I went to him boldly and told the truth.
This thought cheered me wonderfully, and I was busily working away when I heard the whistling and scratching noise made by somebody walking sharply through the gooseberry bushes, and, looking round, there was Ike carrying another ladder, and Shock coming along loaded with baskets, evidently to go on picking apples from one of the neighbouring trees.
They neither of them spoke.

Ike planted the ladder ready, and Shock took a basket and ran up, and was hard at work by the time Ike was out of sight.
I had hardly spoken to the boy since I had found him eating snails; and as I went on picking with my back to him, and thinking of the poor child being found crawling in the road and brought in a basket, and of his always running away from the workhouse, I felt a kind of pity for him, and determined to try if I could not help him, when all at once I felt a sharp pain accompanying a severe blow on the leg, as if some one had thrown a stone at me.
I turned sharply round, holding tightly with one hand; but Shock's back was turned to me, and he was picking apples most diligently.
I looked about, and there was no one else near, the trees being too small for anyone to hide behind their trunks.

Shock did not look in my direction, but worked away, and I at last, as the sting grew less, went on with mine.
"I know it was him," I said to myself angrily.

"If I catch him at it--" I made some kind of mental vow about what I would do, finished filling my basket, went down and emptied it, and ascended the ladder again just as he was doing the same, but I might have been a hundred miles away for all the notice he took of me.
I had just begun picking again, and was glancing over my shoulder to see if he was going to play any antics, when he began to ascend his ladder, and I went on.
_Thump_! A big lump of earth struck me right in the back, and as I looked angrily round I saw Shock fall from the top to the bottom of his ladder, and I felt that horrible sensation that people call your heart in your mouth.
He rose to a sitting position, put his hand to his head, and shouted out: "Who's that throwing lumps ?" Nobody answered; and as I saw him run up the ladder again it occurred to me that it was more a slip down than a fall from the ladder, and I had just come to this conclusion when, seeing that I was watching him, he made me start and cling tightly, for he suddenly fell again.
It was like lightning almost.

One moment he was high up on the ladder, the next he was at the foot; but this time I was able to make out that he guided himself with his arms and his legs, and that it was really more a slide down than a fall.
I turned from him in disgust, annoyed with myself for letting him cheat me into the belief that he had met with an accident, and went on picking apples.
"He's no better than a monkey," I said to myself.
_Whiz_! An apple came so close to my ear, thrown with great violence, that I felt it almost brush me, and I turned so sharply round that I swung myself off the ladder, and had I not clung tightly by my hands I must have fallen.
As it was, the ladder turned right round, in spite of its broadly set foot, and I hung beneath it, while my half-filled basket was in my place at the top.
The distance was not great, but I felt startled as I hung there, when, to my utter astonishment, Shock threw himself round, twisted his ladder, and hung beneath just as I did, and then went down by his hands from round to round of the ladder, turned it back, ran up again, and went on picking apples as if nothing was wrong.
I could not do as he did; I had not muscle enough in my arms, but I threw my legs round the tottering ladder, and slid down, turned it back to its old place, went up quickly, and again picked away.
For the next quarter of an hour all was very quiet, and I had just finished getting all I could when Ike came along.
I started guiltily, for I thought it was Old Brownsmith, but the voice reassured me, and I felt reprieved for the moment as Ike said: "Want the ladder moved ?" I carried my basket down, and emptied it while Ike changed the position of the ladder.
"There you are," he said.