Hey guys. Thanks for all the interest in this project so far and all the encouraging feedback. This chapter's got a somewhat different tone to it compared with the past ones; little more Berenstain Bears-ish, you might say. Anyway, I think you'll enjoy it, so please let me know what you think!

Also, it so happens that today's my birthday, so I went an extra mile to put on a posting spree. In addition to this fic, going up today are…

Prank War
Rendez-Bleu
Road Rovers Rebooted 02: Out of the Blue
(hopefully) Night Plague: The Beast Awakens

No need to read them all at once, of course, but when you do please remember to fave, follow, and review. Love to know what you guys think!

"Better safe than sorry, I always say."

"Well you always say summut (something)."

Vole family, Redwall: The Animated Series

Richard Fangaster had always been a very good-natured pup, which was something given that foxes tended to have it rather poorly. Even in Foxburrow, where vulpines made up a decent majority of the population and the overall prejudice against their kind was less obvious, bullies were still bullies. Where in other areas foxes were generally looked down upon, in those parts the ones with wealthier parents – often employed in less than scrupulous lines of work – often looked down their noses at the rest. Since Richard's parents were respectively a paper mill technician and a part-time waitress, he tended to end up on the lower end of the social spectrum.

Even so, it was unusual enough when he came home in a bad mood that it took no time at all to speak of for his family to notice.

"So," asked his father one evening over dinner, "how was school today?"

Richard waited through Taelia's answer about painting this in art class, reading that in English, and learning the other thing in science. He was hoping that the conversation would turn onto some particular of his sister's education and no one would think to ask about his day.

"I think Richard's day went bad," Taelia piped up. "He's been quiet since he got home and he's got a wrinkle in his forehead like Grandpa."

"I do not," Richard objected. The real damage was done, though, as both his parents turned their attention to him.

"Something wrong, son?" asked his father.

Richard sighed. "Sort of."

"Did Rodney beat you up again?" asked Taelia.

"Sweetheart, stop it," ordered Mom, and the kit clammed up.

Under family scrutiny, the pup sighed. "I'm sort of in trouble at school. You know how the science club has been raising money for a trip to the Invention Museum?"

Mrs. Fangaster nodded. "They made you the head of that project. Is something wrong?"

"Yeah, really wrong. Someone stole all the money in the cash box, and there was almost two hundred dollars in there."

"Yikes," Taelia sympathized.

"You don't mean to say you took the money, do you?" asked Dad.

"No!" Richard burst out. "I swear, I didn't take a cent!"

Dad raised his paws in a sign to relax. "Alright, son, alright. I believe you. Now just calm down and think things through. Now, does anyone else have a key to the box?"

Richard fished out the key he'd been entrusted, hanging on a string around his neck. Everyone remembered how proud he had been the day he came home with it, and how once Mom put it on that string he had worn it like it was an Olympic gold medal.

"I'm the only kid with a key," he answered. "The other keys are always locked up."

Mom thought about it. "Have you seen anyone going into or out of the classroom where the box is kept?"

Richard shook his head. "Uh-uh. And I've been in there late a lot working on the club's dinosaur display."

Taelia rubbed her chin. "Really does sound like you did it," she observed, drawing a disapproving look from her father. "I didn't say he did," she protested.

Meanwhile, Richard put his paws on top of his head. "Yeah, well, everyone at school is saying I did," he moaned, lowering his chin to the table. "Everyone there thinks I'm a thief now."

Dad regarded his son thoughtfully. "Son, I want to ask you something, and I want you to look me in the eye."

Richard did as he was bidden.

"Did you take the money?"

"No! I told you, I don't know-"

"Son, just calm down. Now, tell me again, did you or did you not take the money?"

With a look of agonizing betrayal, Richard shook his head. "Dad, you know I wouldn't do that. I don't know who did it, or how, or when, but honest. It wasn't me."

Dad nodded with satisfaction. "Alright, I believe you – and that's all I need to know."

Taelia was baffled. "Huh?"

Still focused on Richard, Dad went on. "Son, I know this looks bad, and honestly I'm not sure how we can prove you're innocent, but I want you to remember one thing. If you know you didn't take the money, then you know you didn't take the money. That's one thing no one can change, no matter what they think. Alright?"

Richard nodded slowly. "Not that it helps much."

"Well, I'll have a talk with your teacher and anyone else I have to. I can't promise we'll prove anything, but you leave that up to me. I'll let you know what else I need."

"You're going to catch the thieves?" asked Taelia.

"I'll do my best," Dad promised. "As for you, Richard, until something else happens, I just want you to remember: you didn't do it."

It was safe to say that the case of the missing money occupied everyone's thoughts to some degree for the rest of the evening. Later as Taelia went to take her bath, she overheard Dad and Richard going over every possibility of who might have taken the money, how, and when. By the sound of it, they weren't having much progress.

Since Taelia was still very little, Mom came along to help her out. This gave her a chance to ask about the matter privately.

"Mom," she asked as her mother ran a brush along her back, "do you think Richard's gonna get arrested?"

"I don't think they'd arrest him at his age," Mom replied.

"Do you think he'll get in trouble?"

At that Mom paused to consider. "I honestly don't know," she admitted. "It's definitely not a good situation, I'll tell you that."

Taelia thought about that for a minute, then asked about someone else. "Why'd Dad say that Richard not taking the money was all he had to know? He's asking him right now who might have done it, right?"

Mom nodded. "Well, honestly that's their business, but knowing your father I'd say he was saying that more for Richard's benefit, not his own."

"Huh?"

"Let me put it another way," Mom added. "You know what a conscience is, right?"

Taelia thought hard. "Like the cricket in that movie, Pawnocchio?"

"Not exactly. See, a conscience is something inside you that tells you when you've done something good or bad."

"Oh, like the angels on people's shoulders on TV?"

Mom drew in her lips, thinking hard. "Let's go with something else," she suggested. Then she snapped her fingers. "Oh. Remember that story we heard on the radio about the people who hid runaway slaves?"

Taelia brightened. "Oh yeah, the underground trains."

"Underground Railroad," Mom corrected, but she smiled as she said it. "Well, do you remember what the pastor said when he was told he'd go to jail if he'd been helping slaves escape?"

"Uh…" Taelia thought hard. "I think he asked if you can arrest a man on suspenders."

"Suspicion," Mom corrected. "And no, the part before that when it was just the slave owner, Nathan."

"Oh, the mean one." Taelia thought again. "I'd rather be in jail with a… a conscience than be free without one."

"Right, Now what do you think that meant?"

"That even if he went to jail he'd still be a better mammal than Nathan, I guess."

Mom pursed her lips. She was very anxious to drill it into her children's heads that no one mammal was better than another, even if they behaved better or lived a better life. 'There but for the grace of God go I' was, for her, a very significant maxim. For the moment, though, she decided to skim over that particular in pursuit of the main point. "Something like that, yes. See, Nathan and the sheriff could take him to jail and he wouldn't really be able to stop them."

"They did take him to jail." Taelia remembered now. "But then he and the slave dad got out, and-"

"Yes, yes, I remember," Mom broke in, "but let me finish explaining. He couldn't stop them from taking him to jail, or change the fact that what he was doing was illegal even though it was the right thing to do. He couldn't even make them think differently about what he was doing, although he certainly gave the sheriff some good reasons to. All he could control, really, was whether he did the right thing. No one could take that away from him."

Taelia considered that. "So what does that have to do with Richard?"

"Well, we know he didn't take the money. He knows he didn't take the money. He might still get in trouble at school if they think he did, but they can't make him guilty any more than Nathan or the sheriff could make what the pastor was doing a bad thing."

It was a lot to chew on for a kit Taelia's age, but she was pretty sure she understood what her mother was saying. "So as long as Richard's doing the right thing, no one can make him a thief?"

"Exactly; yes. No one can make Richard innocent or guilty except him, just like no one can make you innocent or guilty except you."

"No one can make me innocent or guilty but me," Taelia repeated. "Thanks, Mom. I'll remember that."

As Mom helped Taelia dry off, the kit had no idea just how much that life lesson would come to impact the course of her future. She didn't even really understand the full ramifications of what she'd been told. She did know, though, that she had learned something important that night.

Only time would tell just how important it would be.

You might have noticed that this story was much shorter and more philosophical than the past OC Albums – save, perhaps, for Isabelle's. Rest assured, things will get plenty dramatic later on, but since Taelia grows up to be more of a background character, it seemed appropriate to make this a little more meditative. Besides that there was the fact that this story was, in large part, inspired by an adage with which I grew up: "A smart man learns from his mistakes, but a wise man learns from others' mistakes."

Certain elements of this chapter may strike a familiar chord for some of you. Although a good many details included were changed to suit the characters and setting, the predicament in which Richard found himself was based largely on an actual experience of mine in the workplace. I won't go into all the details here, but the experience certainly drove home for me something I had long believed but never had an experience to which it so decisively linked: namely, that truth is not impacted by others' opinions – opinions, in this case, of one's actions or character. For the purposes of the story I kept it narrowed down to the specific concern at hand.

The reference to the Underground Railroad was inspired in no small part by the radio series 'Adventures in Odyssey,' which had a miniseries of episodes detailing that historic undertaking and referred back to it on several later occasions. Cycling through the series via its app (free in the iTunes app store, by the way), I came across them as I was working on this chapter, and the line, "I'd rather be in jail with a conscience than free without one" was too appropriate not to reference somehow.