sent across to the grey house, and a message returned to say that it

had been duly given to the children. The next morning he sauntered
with purposeful steps past the long blank wall on his way to the

chicken-run and piggery that stood at the bottom of the meadow. The
three children were perched at their accustomed look-out, and their

range of sight did not seem to concern itself with Octavian's
presence. As he became depressingly aware of the aloofness of their

gaze he also noted a strange variegation in the herbage at his feet;
the greensward for a considerable space around was strewn and

speckled with a chocolate-coloured hail, enlivened here and there
with gay tinsel-like wrappings or the glistening mauve of

crystallised violets. It was as though the fairy paradise of a
greedyminded child had taken shape and substance in the vegetation

of the meadow. Octavian's bloodmoney had been flung back at him in
scorn.

To increase his discomfiture the march of events tended to shift the
blame of ravaged chicken-coops from the supposedculprit who had

already paid full forfeit; the young chicks were still carried off,
and it seemed highly probable that the cat had only haunted the

chicken-run to prey on the rats which harboured there. Through the
flowing channels of servant talk the children learned of this

belated revision of verdict, and Octavian one day picked up a sheet
of copy-book paper on which was painstakingly written: "Beast.

Rats eated your chickens." More ardently than ever did he wish for
an opportunity for sloughing off the disgrace that enwrapped him,

and earning some happier nickname from his three unsparing judges.
And one day a chance inspiration came to him. Olivia, his two-year-

old daughter, was accustomed to spend the hour from high noon till
one o'clock with her father while the nursemaid gobbled and digested

her dinner and novelette. About the same time the blank wall was
usually enlivened by the presence of its three small wardens.

Octavian, with seemingcarelessness of purpose, brought Olivia well
within hail of the watchers and noted with hidden delight the

growing interest that dawned in that hithertosternly hostile
quarter. His little Olivia, with her sleepyplacid ways, was going

to succeed where he, with his anxious well-meant overtures, had so
signally failed. He brought her a large yellow dahlia, which she

grasped tightly in one hand and regarded with a stare of benevolent
boredom, such as one might bestow on amateurclassical dancing

performed in aid of a deserving charity. Then he turned shyly to
the group perched on the wall and asked with affectedcarelessness,

"Do you like flowers?" Three solemn nods rewarded his venture.
"Which sorts do you like best?" he asked, this time with a distinct

betrayal of eagerness in his voice.
"Those with all the colours, over there." Three chubby arms pointed

to a distant tangle of sweetpea. Child-like, they had asked for
what lay farthest from hand, but Octavian trotted off gleefully to

obey their welcome behest. He pulled and plucked with unsparing
hand, and brought every variety of tint that he could see into his

bunch that was rapidly becoming a bundle. Then he turned to retrace
his steps, and found the blank wall blanker and more deserted than

ever, while the foreground was void of all trace of Olivia. Far
down the meadow three children were pushing a go-cart at the utmost

speed they could muster in the direction of the piggeries; it was
Olivia's go-cart and Olivia sat in it, somewhat bumped and shaken by

the pace at which she was being driven, but apparently retaining her
wonted composure of mind. Octavian stared for a moment at the

rapidly moving group, and then started in hot pursuit, shedding as
he ran sprays of blossom from the mass of sweet-pea that he still

clutched in his hands. Fast as he ran the children had reached the
piggery before he could overtake them, and he arrived just in time

to see Olivia, wondering but unprotesting, hauled and pushed up to
the roof of the nearest sty. They were old buildings in some need

of repair, and the rickety roof would certainly not have borne
Octavian's weight if he had attempted to follow his daughter and her

captors on their new vantage ground.
"What are you going to do with her?" he panted. There was no

mistaking the grim trend of mischief in those flushed by sternly
composed young faces.

"Hang her in chains over a slow fire," said one of the boys.
Evidently they had been reading English history.

"Frow her down the pigs will d'vour her, every bit 'cept the palms
of her hands," said the other boy. It was also evident that they

had studied Biblical history.
The last proposal was the one which most alarmed Octavian, since it

might be carried into effect at a moment's notice; there had been
cases, he remembered, of pigs eating babies.

"You surely wouldn't treat my poor little Olivia in that way?" he
pleaded.

"You killed our little cat," came in stern reminder from three
throats.

"I'm sorry I did," said Octavian, and if there is a standard
measurement in truths Octavian's statement was assuredly a large

nine.
"We shall be very sorry when we've killed Olivia," said the girl,

"but we can't be sorry till we've done it."
The inexorable child-logic rose like an unyielding rampart before

Octavian's scared pleadings. Before he could think of any fresh
line of appeal his energies were called out in another direction.

Olivia had slid off the roof and fallen with a soft, unctuous splash
into a morass of muck and decaying straw. Octavian scrambled

hastily over the pigsty wall to her rescue, and at once found
himself in a quagmire that engulfed his feet. Olivia, after the

first shock of surprise at her sudden drop through the air, had been
mildly pleased at finding herself in close and unstinted contact

with the sticky element that oozed around her, but as she began to
sink gently into the bed of slime a feeling dawned on her that she

was not after all very happy, and she began to cry in the tentative
fashion of the normally good child. Octavian, battling with the

quagmire, which seemed to have learned the rare art of giving way at
all points without yielding an inch, saw his daughter slowly

disappearing in the engulfing slush, her smeared face further
distorted with the contortions of whimpering wonder, while from

their perch on the pigsty roof the three children looked down with
the cold unpitying detachment of the Parcae Sisters.

"I can't reach her in time," gasped Octavian, "she'll be choked in
the muck. Won't you help her?"

"No one helped our cat," came the inevitablereminder.
"I'll do anything to show you how sorry I am about that," cried

Octavian, with a further desperateflounder, which carried him
scarcely two inches forward.

"Will you stand in a white sheet by the grave?"
"Yes," screamed Octavian.

"Holding a candle?"
"An' saying 'I'm a miserable Beast'?"

Octavian agreed to both suggestions.
"For a long, long time?"

"For half an hour," said Octavian. There was an anxious ring in his
voice as he named the time-limit; was there not the precedent of a

German king who did open-air penance for several days and nights at
Christmas-time clad only in his shirt? Fortunately the children did

not appear to have read German history, and half an hour seemed long
and goodly in their eyes.

"All right," came with threefold solemnity from the roof, and a
moment later a short ladder had been laboriously pushed across to

Octavian, who lost no time in propping it against the low pigsty
wall. Scrambling gingerly along its rungs he was able to lean

across the morass that separated him from his slowly foundering
offspring and extract her like an unwilling cork from it's slushy

embrace. A few minutes later he was listening to the shrill and
repeated assurances of the nursemaid that her previous experience of

filthy spectacles had been on a notably smaller scale.
That same evening when twilight was deepening into darkness Octavian

took up his position as penitent under the lone oak-tree, having
first carefully undressed the part. Clad in a zephyr shirt, which