THE PROFESSOR AND THE SILKWORMS. 
 Once upon a time there lived a most sagacious scientist. He was tall and 
thin and wore pince-nez.  In the orchard of his little country cottage were rows and rows of mulberry trees, and on 
them lived hundreds and hundreds of
silkworms. For the scientist - his name was Boanerges Brown - was studying 
silkworms. He wanted to breed a  kind of
silkworm that would spin threads as frail as gossamer, as pale as spun-glass, 
and as strong as steel. The reason for this
was that he was in love with the blue-eyed dairymaid that brought his milk in 
the morning, and he wanted the silk for her wedding gown.
He cared for his worms as carefully as a mother cares for her babies. He 
knew them all by their first names. He fed  them on the juiciest mulberry  leaves, flavoured with the rarest of salts from
Chile. He made them
glass hoods for sunny days   and covers for when it rained. Every day he looked at the newest cocoons 
and said to his
pets with a smile, " That's much better to-day. Just a little frailer, the smallest bit paler, the 
teenisest bit stronger, and the
silk will be fit for my  dairymaid."
The professor studied so hard, however, and worked so late that he fell ill. The doctor said he needed a 
holiday, and, as he
was too poor to go to the seaside, he wrote to a scientist friend in London, Adolphus Fitztitterton, to suggest 
they changed
places. The scientist friend sent a
telegram, "Boanerges Brown. Delighted. Fitztitterton. " Sorrowfully Professor Brown said good-bye to each of his silkworms-for 
he knew them all by their 
first names-and left
a note for the dairymaid, asking her to feed them every day. Then he set off for London.
Now, it happened that Adolphus Fitztitterton had also been working too hard, and he, too, needed a 
holiday. When he
came to his friend's country cottage, the air did him so much good that he was soon working harder than ever.
He was trying to make a deadly insecticide, for he was in love with a black-eyed chorus-girl, and he 
wanted to keep
the moths from her costly furs. He smiled all over his round red face - he was round and fat and wore 
horn-rimmed
spectacles - as he wrote the last word of his formula. Then, stretching his short, fat legs, he took his can of 
insecticide out into
the garden.
There, to his delight, he found hundred and hundreds of silkworms. Quivering with excitement he dipped 
his syringe into
the can of insecticide.
He sprayed the nearest bush with the potion. The worms on it writhed in agony for an instant and then lay still.
"It works! It works! " cried Adolphus Fitztitterton, and he plied his syringe until every drop of the potion 
was gone and every
silkworm dead.
By that time Boanerges Brown had also recovered, and he came hurrying back to his silkworms as fast as he 
could. He called
them by their first names, but not a solitary worm peeped up at him from the leafy folds; not a single body stirred to 
chew the tasty
greens he had brought back with him.
Heartbroken, he crept to his study, and lit his pipe with a spill he made from a piece of paper lying on 
his desk. The flames
were charring the last words on the paper when Adolphus Fitztitterton came in.
"My insecticide! " he cried. " You have burnt the formula for my insecticide!" And he sat in a chair and wept.
And thus were their lives frustrated.
-S. MASEL, in " Our Darlings' Treasure  House." (Shaw.)

THE MOCK TURTLE'S STORY.
Alice and the Gryphon had not gone far before they saw Mock Turtle in the distance, 
sitting sad and lonely on
a little ledge of rock, and, as they came nearer Alice could hear him sighing as if his heart 
would break. She pitied him deeply. "What is his sorrow? " she
asked the Gryphon, and the Gryphon answered, " It's all his fancy, that; he hasn't got  no sorrow 
you know. Come on! "
So they went up to the Mock Turtle, who looked at them
with large eyes full of tears, but said nothing .
"This here young lady," said the Gryphon, " she
wants for to know your history, she do."
"I'll tell it her," said the Mock Turtle in a deep, hollow tone; " sit down, 
both of you, and don't speak a word till I've finished."
They sat down and nobody spoke for some minutes. Alice thought to herself: " I don't 
see he can ever finish, if he doesn't begin."
But she waited patiently. 
"Once," said the Mock Turtle at last, with a  sigh, " I was a real 
Turtle, and, when we were little, we went to school in
the sea. The
master was an old Turtle - we used to call him Tortoise-''
 "Why did you call him Tortoise, if he wasn't
one?" Alice asked.
" We called him Tortoise because he taught us," said the Mock Turtle, 
angrily. " Really, you are very dull."
" You ought to be ashamed of yourself for asking such a simple question," 
added the Gryphon, and then he said to the
Mock Turtle, " Drive on, old fellow! Don't be all day about it!"
The Mock Turtle went on in these words: " Yes, we went to school in the sea, though you mayn't believe it, and we had the best 
of education- in fact, we went to school every day--"'
"I've been to a day-school, too," said Alice; "you needn't be so proud as all that."
"With extras?" asked the Mock Turtle a little anxiously.
" Yes," said Alice, " we learned French and Music."
" And washing? " said the Mock Turtle.
" Certainly not," said Alice indignantly.
" Ah, then yours wasn't a really good school," said the Mock Turtle in a tone of great relief.
" Now at ours they had at the end of the bill: 
'French, music, and washing - extra."'
" You couldn't have wanted it much," said Alice, "living at the bottom of the sea."
"I couldn't afford to learn it," said the Mock Turtle with a sigh. " I only took the regular course."
" What was that? " inquired Alice.
" Reeling and Writhing, of course, to begin with," the Mock Turtle replied, "and then the 
different branches of
Arithmetic - Ambition, Distraction, Uglification and Derision."
" I never heard of 'Uglification,' " Alice ventured to say." What is it? "
The Gryphon lifted up both its paws in surprise. "What! Never heard of uglifying! " it exclaimed. "You know what to
beautify is, I suppose ?"
" Yes," said Alice doubtfully. " It means - to - make-anything-prettier."
" Well, then," the Gryphon went on, "if you
don't know what to uglify is, you must be a simpleton."
Alice did not feel encouraged to ask any more questions about it, so she turned to the Mock Turtle 
and said, "What
else had you to learn?"
"Well, there was Mystery," the Mock Turtle replied, counting off the subjects on his flappers, " - Mystery,  
ancient and modern,
with Seaography; then Drawling. The Drawling-master was an old conger-eel, that used to come once a week; he taught us 
Drawling,
Stretching, and Fainting in Coils."
"What was that like? " said Alice.
"Well, I can't show it you myself," the Mock Turtle said "I'm too stiff And the Gryphon never learnt it."
"Hadn't time," said the Gryphon. "I went to the Classical master, though. He was an old crab, he was.'
"I never went to him," the Mock Turtle said with a sigh. " He taught Laughing and Grief, they used to say."
"So he did, so he did,'' said the Gryphon, sighing
in his turn; and both creatures hid their faces in their paws.
"And how many hours did you do lessons?" said Alice, in a hurry to change the subject.
" Ten hours the first day," said the Mock Turtle; "nine the next, and so on."
" What a curious plan! " exclaimed Alice.
" That's the reason they're called lessons," the Gryphon remarked; " because they lessen from day to day. "
This was quite a new idea to Alice, and she thought it over a little before she made her next remark. 
"Then the
eleventh day must have been a holiday? "
"Of course it was," said the Mock Turtle.
"And how did you manage on the twelfth?" Alice went on eagerly.
"That's enough about lessons," the Gryphon interrupted in a very decided tone. " Tell her something about 
the games now."
The Mock Turtle sighed deeply, and drew the back of one flapper across his eyes. He looked at Alice and 
tried to speak,
but, for a minute or two, sobs choked his voice. At last, with tears running
down his cheeks, he went on again:
 " You may not have lived much under the sea, and perhaps you were never introduced to a lobster-" (Alice began to say, "I once
tasted-" but checked herself hastily, and said, " No, never.") "-so you can have no idea what a 
a delightful thing a Lobster Quadrille is! "
 " No, indeed, " said Alice. " What sort of a dance is it?"
 " Why," said the Gryphon, " you first form into a line along the sea-shore-"
 "Two lines!" cried the Mock Turtle. "Seals, turtles, and so on; then, when you've cleared the
jelly-fish out of the way, you advance twice - "
" Each with a lobster as a partner! " cried the Gryphon.
"Of course," the Mock Turtle said: " advance twice, set to partners-"
"-change lobsters, and retire in the same order," continued the Gryphon.
"Then," the Mock Turtle went on, "you throw
the - "
"The lobsters! " shouted the Gryphon, with a bound into the air.
" -as far out to sea as you can-" 
"Swim after them! " screamed the Gryphon. "Turn a somersault in the 
sea! " cried the
Mock Turtle, capering wildly about. "Change lobsters again! " yelled the Gryphon. "Back to land again, 
and - that's all the
first figure," said the Mock Turtle, suddenly dropping his voice; and the two creatures, who had been jumping 
about like mad
things all this time, sat down again very sadly and quickly, and looked at Alice.
" It must be a very pretty dance," said Alice timidly. "Come, let's try the first figure! " said the 
Mock Turtle to the
Gryphon. "We can do it without lobsters, you know. Which shall sing?" " Oh, you sing," said the 
Gryphon. "I've
forgotten the words."
So they began solemnly dancing round and round Alice, every now and then treading on her when they 
passed too
close and waving their forepaws to mark the time, while the Mock Turtle
sang this, very slowly and sadly: "Will you walk a little faster? " said a whiting to a snail.
"There's a porpoise close behind us, and he's treading on my tail. See how eagerly the lobsters and the 
turtles all advance!
They are waiting on the shingle-will you come and join the dance?
Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance?
Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, won't you join the dance?
"You can really have no notion how delightful it will be,
When they take us up and throw us, with the lobsters, out to sea!"
But the snail replied, " Too far, too far," and gave a look askance,
Said he thanked the whiting kindly, but he would not join the dance.
Would not, could not, would not, could not, would not join the dance.
Would not, could not, would not, could not, could not join the dance.
"What matters it how far we go ? " his scaly friend replied.
There is another shore, you know, upon the other side.
The further off from England, the nearer is to France
Then turn not pale, beloved snail, but come and join the dance.
Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance?
Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, won't you join the dance?" "Thank you, it's a very interesting dance to watch," said 
Alice, feeling very glad that it over at last.
From "Alice in Wonderland," by LEWIS CARROLL.

HIDDEN TREASURE.
There comes a time in every rightly constructed boy's life when he has a 
raging desire to go somewhere and dig for
hidden treasure. This desire came suddenly one day upon Tom Sawyer. 
Presently he stumbled upon Huck Finn, and
Huck was willing. Huck was always ready to take a hand in any enterprise 
that offered entertainment and required no
capital.
" Where'll we dig?" asked Huck.
" Oh, almost anywhere."
"Why, is it hidden all around?" 
"No, indeed. It's hidden in very particular places, Huck, sometimes on 
islands; sometimes in rotten chests under the
end of a limb of an old dead tree, just where the shadow falls at 
midnight, but mostly under the floor in haunted
houses."
"Who hides it? "
"Why, robbers, of course." 
"If it was mine I wouldn't hide it: I'd spend it 
and have a good time."
"So would I," said Tom; " but robbers always hide it and leave it there. 
They mean to come back for it, but they
usually forget the marks, or else they die. It lies a long time and gets 
rusty, and by and by somebody finds an old
yellow paper which tells them how to find the marks - a paper that takes 
over a week to be ciphered because it's
mostly signs and hieroglyphics,"
"Hiero - which?" "
" Hieroglyphics-pictures and things, you know, that don't seem to mean anything."
" Have you one of those papers, Tom?
" No."
"Well, then, how are you going to find out the  marks? "
" I don't want any marks. We've tried Jackson's Island a little, and we can try it again sometime; 
and there's the old
haunted house up the Still-House branch; and there are lots of dead-limb trees -loads of them."
" But how will you know which one to go for?"
" Go for all of them."
" Why, Tom, it'll take all the summer."
" Well, what of that? Suppose you find a brass pot with a hundred dollars in it, or a rotten chest 
full of diamonds! "
Huck's eyes glowed. "But say, where are you going to dig first? "
"Well, suppose we tackle that old dead-limb tree on the hill on the other side of Still-House branch?"
" I'm agreed."
So they got a crippled pick and a shovel, and set out on their three-mile tramp. They arrived hot and 
panting and threw
themselves down in the shade of a neighbouring elm to rest.
" Huck," said Tom, " if we find a treasure here, what are you going to do with your share? "
" Well, I'll have pie and a glass of soda every  day, and I'll go to every circus that comes along. I'll 
have a gay time."
They worked and sweated for half an hour. No result. They toiled another half-hour. Still no result. Huck 
asked, "Do they
always bury as deep as this? "
" Sometimes. Not usually. I reckon we haven't the right place."
So they chose a new spot and began again. The labour dragged a little, but still they made progress. 
They pegged away in
silence for some time. Finally Huck leaned on his shovel, swabbed the beaded drops from his brow with his 
sleeve, and
said,
"Where are you going to dig next, after we get this one ? "
"I think perhaps we'll tackle the old tree over on
Cardiff Hill, at the back of the widow's."
"I reckon that will be a good one," said Huck: "but won't the old widow take it away from us? It's on her land ."
"She take it away! Perhaps she'd like to try it once!  One of these hidden treasures belongs 
to  whoever finds
it. It doesn't make any difference
whose land it's on."
That was satisfactory. The work went on. By and by Huck said, " We must be in the wrong place again. What do you think? "
"It is very curious, Huck. Oh, I know! You have to find out where the shadow of the limb falls at
midnight, and that's
where you dig."
"Then we've done all this work for nothing," said Huck; " and now we have to come back in the
night. It's a very long way."
"We have to do it to-night, too," said Tom; "because if anyone sees these holes they'll know in a minute 
what's here and
they'll get it."
" Well, I'll come round and meow to-night."
"All right," said Tom. "Let's hide the tools in the bushes."
That night the boys sat in the shadow waiting. It was a lonely place, and an hour made solemn by old
traditions. Spirits
whispered in the rustling leaves, ghosts lurked in the murky nooks, the deep
baying of a hound floated up out of the distance, owl answered with his sepulchral note. The boys 
were subdued by these solemnities and talked little By and by they judged
that twelve o'clock had come; they marked where the shadow of the dead limb fell and began to dig. Their 
hopes began to rise; their interest grew stronger; and their industry  kept
pace with it. The hole deepened and still deepened; but every time their hearts jumped heating the 
pick strike something, they only suffered a new disappointment. It was only a
stone. At last Tom said, "It's no good, Huck, we're wrong  again."
"But we can't be wrong," said Huck. "We marked the shadow to a dot."
" I know that, but there's another thing – we only guessed the time. Very likely it was too late or too early."
Huck dropped his shovel. "That's it," he said. "That's the very trouble. We'll have to give this one up. Besides, this kind of thing 
is too dreadful, here this time of night with
witches and ghosts fluttering round. I feel as if something's behind me all the time, and I'm afraid to turn 
round because perhaps there are others in front waiting for a chance. I've been
creeping all over ever since I came here. Say, Tom, let's give this place up and try somewhere else."
"All right," said Tom. "Well try the haunted house, but in the daytime."
 They started down the hill. There in the middle
of the moonlit valley below them stood the
"haunted " house, utterly isolated, its fences gone 
long ago, rank weeds smothering the very doorstep,
the chimney crumbled to ruin, the window-sashes
vacant, a corner of the roof caved in. The boys gazed awhile, half expecting to see a blue light flit past the window; then, talking 
in a low tone as  befitted the time and the circumstances, they struck off to 
the right so as to give the haunted house a wide berth.
About noon the next day the boys arrived at the dead tree; they had come for their tools. Tom was impatient 
to go to the haunted house; Huck was measurably so, also, but suddenly
he said, " Tom,
do you know what day it is? "
Tom mentally ran over the days of the week and
then quickly lifted his eyes with a startled look in them. "My! I never once thought of it, Huck!"
"Well, I didn't either; but all at once it popped on to
me that it was Friday."
"My word, Huck, we might have got into a terrible scrape, tackling such a thing on a Friday." 
"Might! Better say we would! There are some
lucky days perhaps, but Friday isn't one."
"Well, we'll drop this thing for to-day, Huck, and play Robin Hood."
"Who's Robin Hood? " asked Huck.
"Why, he was one of the greatest men that was ever in England, and the best. He was a robber."
"Who did he rob? "
"Only sheriffs and bishops and rich people and kings, and suchlike. He never bothered the poor. He loved them. 
"He always divided up with them perfectly square."
"Well, he must have been a brick."
"He was, Huck. There aren't any such men now, I can tell you. He could lick any man in England with one hand 
tied behind him; and he could take his yew bow and plug a ten-cent piece every time,
a mile and a half."
"What's a yew bow? "
 " I don't know. It's some kind of bow, of course. We'll play Robin Hood, 
it's grand fun. I'll teach you. " 
 So they played Robin Hood all the afternoon,
 now and then casting a yearning eye down upon the
 haunted house, and passing a remark about the
morrow's prospects and possibilities there.
 On Saturday shortly after noon the boys were
at the dead tree again, digging in their last hole,
not with great hope but merely because Tom said
there were many cases where people had given up a
treasure after getting down within six inches of it,
and then somebody else had come along and turned
it up with a single thrust of a shovel. The thing
failed this time, however, so the boys shouldered
their tools and went away, feeling they had not
trifled with fortune, but had fulfilled all the requirements that belong to the business of treasure-hunting.
When they reached the haunted house, there was something so weird and 
grisly about the dead silence that reigned
there under the baking sun, and something so depressing about the 
loneliness and desolation of the place, that they
were afraid for a moment to venture in. Then they crept to the door and, 
took a trembling peep. They saw a weed-grown, floorless room, an
ancient fireplace,
vacant windows, a ruined staircase. They presently 
entered softly, with quickened pulses,
talking in whispers, ears alert to catch the slightest sound, and muscles 
tense and ready for instant retreat.
(To be continued.)
-Adapted front " The Adventures of Tom Sawyer," by MARK TWAIN. (Chatto and 
Windus.)


THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL.
On a September day in the year 1792 Sergeant Bibot sat on an overturned and empty cask close by the gate of the western 
barricade to the city of  Paris. A small detachment of citizen soldiers were under his command. The work had been very
hot lately; the terrified aristocrats were trying their hardest to slip out of Paris. Every day Bibot had had the satisfaction of 
unmasking some fugitive royalists and sending them back to be tried by the Committee of Public Safety. He was proud of the 
fact that he had sent at least fifty aristos to the guillotine.
That day all the sergeants in command at the various barricades had had special orders. Recently a very great number of 
aristocrats had succeeded in escaping. There were curious rumours about these escapes; they had become very frequent and 
singularly daring; the people were becoming strangely excited about it all.
Sergeant Grospierre had been sent to the guillotine for allowing a whole family of aristos to slip out of the north gate, under his 
very nose.
It was asserted that these escapes were organized by a band of daring 
Englishmen under the leadership of a man
whose pluck and audacity were almost fabulous. No one had seen these 
mysterious Englishmen, and, as for their
leader, he was never spoken of save with a superstitious shudder. The 
Committee of Public Safety would receive from
some mysterious source a scrap of paper containing a brief notice that 
the band of Englishmen was at work, and it was always signed with a little red star-shaped flower,  called in England the Scarlet 
Pimpernel. Within a few hours
of the receipt of this impudent note, the Committee would hear that so 
many royalists and aristocrats had reached
the coast, and were on their way to England and safety.
The guards at the gates had been doubled, the sergeants in command had 
been
threatened with death, while liberal rewards were offered for the 
capture of the Englishmen . A sum of five thousand
francs was promised to the man that laid hands
on the mysterious and elusive Scarlet Pimpernel. Every one felt that 
Bibot would be that man, and Bibot agreed; so, day after day people came to watch him at the west gate in order to see him lay 
hands on any fugitive aristocrat who might be accompanied by the mysterious Englishman.
"Bah! " said Bibot to his trusted corporal, Grospierre was a fool. Had it 
been me now at the north gate last week . . . "
Bibot spat on the ground to express his contempt for his comrade's 
stupidity.
" How did it happen, citizen? " asked the corporal.
" Grospierre was at the gate, keeping good watch, " began Bibot 
pompously, as the crowd closed in round him to
listen. " The market carts were going through the gates, and there was one laden with casks, and driven by an old man with a boy 
beside him. Grospierre was a little drunk, but he thought himself 
very clever; he looked into the casks - most of
them, at least - saw they were empty and let the cart go through. Half an 
hour later, up comes a captain of the guard
with a dozen soldiers. ' Has a cart gone through? ' he asks. 'Yes,' says 
Grospierre, 'not half an hour ago.' 'And you
have let them escape!' shouts the captain furiously. 'You'll go to the 
guillotine for this! That cart held the Duc de Chatis and all
his family.' ' What?' thunders Grospierre. 'Yes, and the driver was none 
other than that scoundrel, the Scarlet
Pimpernel!'"
A howl greeted this tale. Grospierre had paid for his blunder on the 
guillotine - but what a fool! Bibot was laughing so
much at his own tale that it was some time before he could continue.
" 'After them, my men! ' shouts the captain. 'Remember the reward.' With 
that he rushes through the gate, followed by 
his dozen soldiers."
"But it was too late!" shouted the crowd excitedly. " They never got 
them! Fancy Grospierre not examining the casks
properly!"
These sallies amused Bibot exceedingly. He laughed until the tears rolled 
down his cheeks. " No, no! " he said at
last. " Those aristocrats were not in the cart; the driver was not the 
Scarlet Pimpernel!"
" What!"
" No! The captain of the guard was that scoundrel of an Englishman, and 
every one of his soldiers an aristo!"
The crowd said nothing: the story savoured too much of the supernatural; 
and they could not help feeling a little awed and afraid. Truly that Englishman must be the devil himself.
The sun was sinking. Bibot prepared to close the gates. " Forward the 
carts! " he said. Some dozen covered carts
were drawn up in a row, ready to leave town in order to fetch the produce 
from the country to the market the next
morning. They were mostly well known to Bibot, as they went through his 
gate twice daily. He spoke to one or two of
their drivers-chiefly women-and was at great pains to examine the inside of 
the carts. "You never know," he would
say, "and I'm not going to be caught like that fool, Grospierre."
 The women that drove the carts usually spent
their day beneath the platform of the guillotine,
knitting and gossiping whilst they watched the rows
of tumbrils arriving with the victims the Reign
of Terror claimed every day. Bibot, during the day,
had been on duty near the guillotine. He
recognized most of the old hags that sat there
and knitted, while head after head fell beneath the
knife.  
"Hey, Missis! " said Bibot to one of these horrible hags. " What have you 
there ? " He had seen her earlier in the day
with her knitting and her whip close beside her. Now she had fastened a row 
of curly locks of hair to the whip handle,
all colours from gold to silver, fair to dark, and she stroked them with 
her big bony fingers as she laughed at Bibot. "The executioner cut these off for me from the heads as they rolled down," she said. 
" He has promised me some
more to-morrow, but I don't know if I shall be at my usual place."
"How is that?" asked Bibot, who, hardened soldier as he was, could not help 
shuddering at this horrible woman with her
ghastly trophy on the handle of her whip.
" My grandson has the small-pox," she said with a jerk of her thumb 
towards the inside of her cart. " Some say it's
the plague. If it is, I shan't be allowed into Paris to-morrow."
At the first mention of small-pox, Bibot had stepped hastily backwards; 
and when the old hag spoke of plague, he
retreated as fast as he could.
" Curse you! " he muttered, while the whole crowd hastily avoided the 
cart. The old woman laughed. "Coward!" she
said to Bibot. " Bah! what a man, to be afraid of sickness! "
" But the plague! " said Bibot.
Every one was silent and filled with horror at the thought of the 
loathsome malady, the one thing which still could arouse terror and disgust in these savage, brutalized creatures.
"Get out with you, and with your plague-stricken brood! " shouted Bibot hoarsely; and with another rough laugh and
coarse jest, the old woman whipped up her lean nag and drove out of the gate.
This incident had spoiled the afternoon for the crowd. They stayed about the barricades, silent and sullen for a time,
eyeing one another suspiciously, and avoiding one another lest the plague lurked already in their midst. Presently, as
in the case of Grospierre, a captain of the guard appeared suddenly; but he was known to Bibot, and there was no
fear of his turning out to be a sly Englishman in disguise.
" A cart …" he shouted breathlessly even before he reached the gate.
" What cart? " asked Bibot roughly.
"Driven by an old hag . . . . A covered cart …"
" There were a dozen . . ."
"An old hag that said her grandson had the plague? "
"Yes."
"You have let them go?"
"Why, yes! " said Bibot, whose purple cheeks had suddenly become white with fear.
" The cart contained the former Countess of Tournay and her two children, all of them traitors and condemned to
death."
" And their driver? " muttered Bibot, as a shudder ran down his spine.
"My man," said the captain, "it is feared that it was that confounded Englishman, the Scarlet Pimpernel."
---Adapted extract from " The Scarlet Pimpernel," by BARONESS ORCZY. (Hodder and Stoughton.)

GRANDMA AND THE PIRATES.
"Stick 'em up! " 
I awoke with a start from a pleasant little nap on the garden-seat. The sun still shone, the blue waters of
the loch were as blue as ever, and the wooded hill as peaceful. Had I 
been dreaming?
" Stick 'em up! "
Surely I knew that raucous voice! The stern words, too, had a familiar 
ring. Yesterday they were hurled at me by a
most awe-inspiring " gangster "; the day before by a picturesque cowboy 
"tough" - and only this morning they had
been hissed in my ear by a really very uncivilized American traffic-cop. 
But always the voice was the voice of Michael.
In my grandmotherly wisdom I knew better than to disobey that voice. I "stuck 'em up" and trembled in the most
approved manner, knowing what was expected of me.
" Ah, pirates this time," I murmured after a quick glance round - "quite unmistakably pirates."
There seemed to be four of them, making up a very respectable horde. They 
surrounded me, flourishing deadly
weapons, which my experienced grandmotherly imagination identified at 
once as cutlasses and pistols. There was no
way of escape, except the way that no grandmother worth the name would 
dream of taking - the mean " Run away, I'm
busy " way. But who could have the heart to extinguish the bloodthirsty 
gleam in Michael's eyes? Eye, rather, for the
right one was covered with a most sinister-looking patch.
I could not let down that patch, ornamented with inky skull and 
crossbones, or that fierce corked moustache, or that
spotted red handkerchief knotted in true pirate fashion round his head. 
All the pirates had their heads in spotted red
Handkerchiefs and their right eyes in patches. It seemed to be the proper buccaneering 
uniform.
" Please, sir," I said in trembling tones, addressing him whom I took to be 
the captain of the band, "may I ask who you are? "
" I'm Long John Silver," he hissed through set teeth (Michael is an adept 
at hissing through set teeth), "and we are
going to take you away to our cave."
"Where is your cave?" I asked anxiously.
The Very Smallest Pirate, whose patch had slipped down on to her nose, 
pointed a dainty but unrelenting finger up
the hill behind the farm. "It's up there," she said.
" Oh, dear," I cried, "is it far up? For it's a very hot day for climbing 
hills."
" It's a very nice cave," said the Very Smallest Pirate.
"I'm sure it is," I said, "and I should like to see it very much if it were 
not for the hill. And, please, what do they call
you, Mr. Pirate? "
" I'm Cut-throat Bill," she answered sweetly.
" Of course," I said, " I might have known that."
"And I'm Red-handed Joe," put in the Next Size in Pirates, whose piratical 
head-dress took on rather a jaunty air on
top of her soft brown curls; and Rita is Bloodthirsty Jack."
" And very good names, too," said I, admiringly.
But Captain Long John waxed impatient with this gentle unpiratical chit-chat. "You are our prisoner," he roared with a voice like 
a fog-horn. "Come at once to the cave or I'll stab you with my cutlass," and he made passes at me with a walking-stick.
I raised beseeching hands. " Oh, please, dear pirates, don't be so cruel to 
a poor old lady. I really couldn't climb that
hill to-day."
"Ha, ha! " laughed Long John scornfully, " we'll drag you there with chains."
" No, we won't," said Rita, the biggest of the pirates, alias Bloodthirsty 
Jack, very decidedly. I was thankful for one
kind heart. " At least," she added, " not if you really don't want to come; 
but I thought you might like to see the
Bones."
" Bones? " said I, duly impressed. " What sort of Bones? "
" Human Bones! " bellowed Long John with ferocity.
" Human Bones," replied little Cut-throat Bill with most disarming relish.
" But I don't want to see the Bones," I protested, not if I have to climb 
that hill."
"I have one here to show you," said Bloodthirsty Jack, and I shuddered as 
she thrust a cast-off ram's horn under my
nose.
" Very nice Bones," I remarked rather faintly. "But as I don't want to be 
made into Bones myself, and as I've been
prisoner for quite ten minutes, do you think you might let me go now? "
" I'm afraid," said Bloodthirsty Jack very politely, " we can't let you go 
till you have paid a ransom."
"How big a ransom?" I asked doubtfully.
" A thousand pounds," came the fog-horn voice at me, while its owner 
pointed my own ruler straight at my head. I
wrung my hands in despair.
" Oh, please, pirates, couldn't you do with less? I haven't got a thousand 
pounds handy."
" Wouldn't Granddad pay it to get you back?" piped up Red-handed Joe, 
evidently wishing to be helpful.
" No," I said decidedly. "I'm quite sure he would not. Show a little mercy, 
I begged; " I am very old and very poor."
Long John was one who knew not the name of mercy, but the heart of 
Bloodthirsty Jack melted. "Could you manage about five pounds, do you think? " she asked kindly. " Or even five shillings?"
" Now I call that kind," I said. " The difficulty is that I haven't any 
money about me at present; and I should not like
to keep you waiting while I went and fetched it. But," I continued in 
winning tones, " I know where there are some
excellent chocolates. How would a chocolate all round meet the case? 
It's only a suggestion," I added hastily, for I saw Long John frown and bite his corked moustache, " but they are the very special 
chocolates that I got in town yesterday."
I saw the unpatched eyes of the pirates exchange glances, and the 
expression in those eyes I thought seemed
favourable.
"All right," said Long John, as one who accepted a compromise, " that'll 
do. Where are they? "
"You'll find them in a box on the sideboard," I said brightly. " But you 
must swear, as honest pirates, to take only one
each."
"Right-o," said the pirates.
"If I get one with a nut, may I spit it out and take another? " asked the 
Very Smallest Pirate.
"That," I said, " would be quite fair."
The pirates formed four and made a bee-line for the house. As he went, 
Long John Silver burst into fierce song
Oh, we're tough, mighty tough in the West,
With lots of curly hair upon our chest; We haven't any manners
And we pull our teeth with spanners.
Oh, we're tough, mighty tough in the West!
I settled comfortably into my corner again. The tumult and the shouting 
died away. "It's an adventurous thing to be a
grandmother these days," thought I, " but how jolly! " The blue loch and 
the peaceful hills seemed undisturbed. Duty
done, grandmotherly prestige upheld, I slept again, this time in peace.
-Adapted from "Punch."

HIDDEN TREASURE.
(Continued from page 32.)
In a little while familiarity modified their fears, and they examined the 
place with interest, rather admiring their own
boldness, and wondering at it, too. Next they wanted to look upstairs. 
This was something like cutting off retreat, but,
after daring each other, they threw their tools into a corner and made 
the ascent. Upstairs there were the same signs
of decay. In one corner they found a cupboard that promised mystery, but 
there was nothing in it. Their courage was
up now, and well in hand. They were about to go down and begin work when - 
"Hush! " said Tom.
"What is it? " whispered Huck, blanching with fright.
"There! Hear it?"
"Yes! O my! Let's run!"
"Keep still! Don't budge! They're coming right towards the door."
The boys stretched themselves on the floor with their eyes to knot-holes 
in the planking, and lay waiting in a misery
of fear.
" My goodness, Huck, I wish I was out of this," whispered Tom.
Two men entered, and each boy said to himself, "That's the old deaf and 
dumb Spaniard that's been about town once
or twice lately - never saw the other man before."
"The other," was a ragged, unkempt creature, with nothing very pleasant in 
his face. The Spaniard had bushy white
whiskers; long white hair flowed from under his sombrero, and he wore 
green goggles. When they came in "the other"
was talking in a low voice; they sat on the ground facing the door with 
their backs to the wall, and the speaker
continued his remarks. His manner became less guarded and his words more 
distinct as he proceeded.
"No," said he, "I've thought it all over, and I don't like it. It's 
dangerous."
"Dangerous! " grunted the " deaf and dumb" Spaniard, to the vast surprise of the boys. "Milksop!" The voice made the 
boys gasp and quake. It was Injun Joe the
half-breed's! "Well, what's more dangerous than coming here in the 
daytime? " he continued. " Anybody would
suspect us that saw us."
"I know that, but there wasn't any other place as handy after that fool of 
a job. I want to quit this shanty. I wanted to
yesterday, only it wasn't any use trying to stir with those blessed boys 
playing over there on the hill in full view."
"Those blessed boys," quaked again at this remark. The two men got out 
some food and made a luncheon. After a
long and thoughtful pause, Injun Joe said, "Look here, lad, you go back 
up the river where you belong. Wait there till
you hear from me. I'll take the chances on dropping into this town just 
once more, for a look. We'll do that 'dangerous'
job when I think things look well for it. Then for Texas! Well leg it 
together!"
This was satisfactory. Both men presently fell to yawning, and Injun Joe 
said, "I'm dead for sleep. It's your turn to
watch." He curled down in the weeds and soon began to snore. By and by 
the watcher began to nod; his head
drooped lower and lower; both men were snoring now.
The boys drew a long grateful breath. Tom whispered, " Now's our chance - 
come! "
Huck said, " I can't - I'd die if they were to wake."
Tom urged; Huck held back. At last Tom rose softly and started alone; but 
the first step he made wrung such a
hideous creak from the crazy floor that he sank down almost dead with 
fright. He made no second attempt. The boys
lay there counting the dragging moments till it seemed to them that time 
must be done and eternity growing grey. At
last they were grateful to note that the sun was setting.
Now one snore ceased. Injun Joe sat up, stared around, smiled grimly upon 
his comrade, stirred him up with his foot
and said, "Here! You're a watchman, aren't you?"
"My! Have I been asleep?"
"Oh, partly, partly. Nearly time for us to be moving, pard. What'll we do 
with what little swag we've got left? "
"Leave it here, as we've always done, I reckon. No use taking it away 
till we start south. Six hundred and fifty in
silver's something to carry."
" Yes, but it may be a good while before I finish that job. It isn't in 
such a very good place; let us bury it properly,
bury it deep."
" Good idea," said the comrade, who walked across the room, knelt down, 
raised one of the hearthstones and took
out a bag which jingled pleasantly. He subtracted from it twenty or thirty dollars for himself and as much for Injun Joe and 
passed the bag to the 
latter, who was on his knees in the corner,
digging with his bowie-knife.
The boys forgot all their fears, all their miseries in an instant. With 
gloating eyes they watched every movement. Luck!
the splendour of it was beyond all imagination! Six hundred dollars was money enough to make half a dozen boys
rich! Here was treasure-hunting under the happiest auspices - there would not 
be any bothersome uncertainty as to
where to dig. They nudged each other every moment - eloquent nudges and 
easily understood, for they simply meant, "Oh, but aren't you glad now we're here?"
Injun Joe's knife struck something.
"Hallo!" said he. " Half-rotten plank-no, it's a box, I believe. Here, lend 
a hand, and we'll see what it's here for. Never
mind, I've broken a hole! " He reached his hand in and drew it out. "Man, 
it's money!"
The two men examined the handful of coins. They were gold. The boys above 
were as excited as themselves and as
delighted.
Joe's comrade said, " Well make quick work of this. There's an old rusty 
pick over amongst the weeds in the corner.
I saw it a minute ago." He brought the boys' pick and shovel. Injun Joe 
took the pick, looked it over critically, shook
his head, muttered something to himself, and then began to use it.
The box was soon unearthed. It was not very large; it was iron-bound and 
had been very strong before the slow years
had injured it. The men contemplated the treasure in blissful silence.
"Pard, there are thousands of dollars here," said Injun Joe.
"It was always said that Murrel's gang were around here one summer," the 
stranger observed. "Now you won't need to do that other job."
Injun Joe frowned. " You don't know me," he said. " Anyway you don't know 
about that affair. It's not robbery
altogether - it's revenge! I'll need your help. When it's finished, then 
Texas. Go home and stand by till you hear from me."
" Well, if you say so. What shall we do with this, bury it again? "
" Yes " (ravishing delight overhead). " No!"
(profound distress overhead). " I'd nearly forgotten. That pick had fresh 
earth on it! " (The boys were sick with terror in
a moment). "What business have a pick and a shovel here? What business with 
fresh earth on them? Who brought
them here, and where have they gone? Have you heard anybody, seen anybody? 
What! Bury it again and leave them
to come and see the ground disturbed! Not exactly, not exactly. We'll take 
it to my den."
" Why, of course! " said the other. " Might have thought of that before. 
You mean number one? "
" No, number two, under the cross. The other place is too common."
" All right. It's nearly dark enough to start."
Injun Joe got up and went about from window to window, peeping cautiously 
out. Presently he said, " Who could have
brought those tools here? Do you think they can be upstairs? "
The boys' breath forsook them. Injun Joe put his hand on his knife, halted 
a moment, undecided, and then turned
toward the stairway. The boys thought of the cupboard, but their strength 
was gone. The steps came creaking up the
stairs; the intolerable distress of the situation stirred the boys to 
action; they were about to spring for the cupboard, when there was a crash of rotten timbers, and Injun Joe landed on the ground 
amid the debris of the ruined stairway.
He gathered himself up, and his comrade said, "Now, what's the use of all that. If there's anybody up there, let them 
stay-who cares? If they want to jump down now
and get into trouble, who objects? It will be dark in fifteen minutes and 
then let them follow us if they want to. In my
opinion, whoever threw those things in here caught sight of us and took us 
for ghosts or something. I'll bet they're
running yet."
Joe grumbled awhile. Then he agreed with his friend that what daylight was 
left ought to be used in getting things
ready for the leaving. Shortly afterwards they slipped out of the house in 
the deepening twilight, and moved towards
the river with their precious box.
Tom and Huck rose up, weak but vastly relieved, and stared after them 
through the chinks between the logs of the
house. Follow? Not they! They were content to reach the ground again 
without broken necks, and take the townward
track over the hill. They did not talk much; they were too much absorbed in 
hating themselves, hating the ill-luck that
made them take the pick and shovel there.
But for that, Injun Joe never would have suspected. He would have hidden 
the silver with the gold to wait there till his
revenge was satisfied, and then he would have had the misfortune to find 
the money missing. Bitter, bitter luck that
the tools were ever brought there! They resolved to keep a lookout for that 
Spaniard when he should come to town
spying out for chances to do his revengeful job, and follow him to " number 
two" wherever that might be. Then a ghastly thought occurred to Tom.
" Revenge? What if he means us, Huck!"
" Oh, don't," said Huck, nearly fainting.
They talked it all over, and as they entered the town they agreed to 
believe that he might possibly mean somebody else.
-Adapted from "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer," by MARK TWAIN. (Chatto and 
Windus.)

QUILLS.
One day during a long hard winter, Quills, the porcupine, was returning 
to his den for a doze, when right into his
pathway, with a noiseless pounce, dropped a great, grey, furry beast with 
tufted ears, and long white snarling teeth,
and huge pads of paws. It crouched before him, its stub of a tail 
twitching, and glared upon him with pale, cruel, moon-like eyes.
Up went Quills' spines at once, and he ducked his nose between his 
fore-paws; but he was determined to reach his
den, so he went right on. Seeing, however, that the intruder showed no 
sign of getting out of the way, Quills suddenly
turned round and went on backwards, lashing out fiercely with his tail. 
The lynx was wild with hunger, but not to the
pitch of suicidal recklessness. He ached unbearably for the 
well-nourished flesh that he knew lay hidden beneath
those bristling spines, but he knew the price that he would have to pay 
for it. With a screech of disappointed rage he
restrained himself and slipped from the path, and Quills, chattering 
noisily, disappeared into his hole.
As the bitter winter drew on, burying the wilderness under five or six 
feet of snow and scourging it with storm and iron
frost, Quills had many more or less similar encounters with lynxes, and 
twice with a surly old black bear. Strange as
it may seem, he usually faced the foe with his tail, and the result was 
always the same. No prowler was prepared to
pay the price which Quills would have exacted for his carcass. In March, 
however, when the snow had begun to settle
heavily under a week of thaw, Quills was confronted by a new enemy.
Very early one morning, when the first ghost-grey light of dawn was 
beginning to glimmer through the windless forest, Quills had just come down out of an old hemlock, when he caught sight of a 
strange beast gliding over the snow, some thirty or forty yards away. The stranger, dark brown in 
colour, with a bushy tail, long and low-set
body, weasel-shaped head, and grizzly-grey face with black snout, was somewhat under three feet in length.

A CANADIAN PORCUPINE.

It was distinctly smaller, and, at first glance, less dangerous-looking than a lynx; but some inherited instinct told Quills at once 
that this was 
an enemy far more to be dreaded than the
fiercest of lynxes. He had never seen a fisher before. Fortunately
for the porcupine tribe, fishers were very scarce in the valley of the 
Tobique; but a chill of ancestral fear struck to
Quills' heart.
The fisher, catching sight of him, whirled in his tracks and darted at him 
with a light swiftness and deadly intensity of
purpose very different from the hesitating attitude of Quills' other foes. 
And Quills' tactics were now very different.
Jutting from the snow near the trunk of the hemlock was a pile of logs and 
branches, and under this protection Quills
thrust his nose and head, up to the shoulders, leaving only his armed back 
and fiercely-slashing tail exposed to the
assault. He was no more than in position ere his enemy was upon him.
Now, in nine cases out of ten - perhaps even in ninety-nine out of a 
hundred - the fight between the porcupine and the
fisher has but one result: the fisher eats the porcupine. He is very much 
the stronger. He is, taking it all in all, the
most savage, swift, and crafty of all the marauders of the wilderness, and, 
above all else, for some unknown reason,
the porcupine quills, so deadly to others, have for him comparatively few 
terrors. They do not poison or inflame his
flesh, which seems to possess the faculty of soon rejecting them and 
casting them forth through the skin. All he has
to do is to flip the porcupine over on its back, annexing as few spines as 
possible in the act, and he has the
unprotected throat and under-body at the mercy of his fangs.
In the present case, however, the too-confident fisher had an exceptional 
porcupine to deal with. Quills was not
unusually large and vigorous, but, for a porcupine, sagacious. He had 
settled himself down solidly into the snow, and,
when the fisher, dodging a blow of his tail, and accepting a sharp
dose of spines in the shoulder, tried to turn him  over with a twist of the paw, Quills resisted  successfully, and with a timely 
swing of his haunches stabbed his assailant's whole flank full of spines.
 The fisher had expected some resistance, some more or less futile defence, but this was attack.
 Always short in temper, he flew into a blind rage at the pain and the surprise of it. He drew back a few inches to gain impetus for 
the next effort, and this was his mistake-this, and underrating his opponent. At that very instant he got a full, flailing stroke 
across his face from Quills' tail.
 It filled his nose and mouth with spines - that was to be expected; but - for the blow had surely been guided by the patron spirit 
of all porcupines - it also filled both his eyes.
 With a screech of anguish he flung himself full
 on Quills' back and strove to bite down through the
 armour of spikes; but he was now totally blind,
 and his jaws were stuck so full of spines as to be
 practically powerless. Meanwhile his mad struggles
 were simply driving deeper and deeper into all
 his tender under-parts those terrible four-inch spikes
 that clothed the back of his intended victim. All
 at once the agony became too great for even his
 indomitable spirit. He lurched off and dragged
 himself away, stumbling and staggering, and bumping into tree trunk and bush, till he reached a thicket which he felt to be dense 
enough to hide his defeat. Here death came to him, not too soon.
 For some minutes after his defeated foe had gone, Quills remained with his head thrust under the wood-pile, chattering fierce 
defiance and lashing wildly with his tail. Then very cautiously he backed out and looked about him. He had been roughly 
mauled. His spines and fur were dishevelled, and he was bleeding from some deep scratches where his assailant's claws had gone 
home. But he was not seriously the worse from his dreadful encounter, and he had beaten fairly and overwhelmingly the terrible 
killer of porcupines. His sombre and solitary spirit glowed with triumph. Rather hurriedly he crawled on to his lair, and there set 
himself to his much-needed toilet. Outside his retreat the first long, level rays of the sunrise crept across the
snow touching the trunks of the birches and the poplars to a mystical rose 
pink and saffron.
-Adapted from "Some Animal Stories," by C. G. D. ROBERTS. (Dent.)

ACTING CHARADES.
It was not often that the Bargery children were invited out for the 
evening; but it sometimes happened. It happened
when there was any sort of festivity at the Willetts', who were friends and 
neighbours of the Bargerys.
One memorable evening they played charades, a game in which the company is 
divided into two groups - actors and audience. The actors that took the first turn were Henry Bargery, who agreed to act as stage 
manager for the group, Jane Bargery, David Bargery, and little Jocelyn Willett. They had to go out of the room, put their heads 
together, and select a word of two syllables. This word had to be acted in three little scenes before the rest of the company. The 
first scene was to represent the first syllable of the word, the second scene the second syllable, and the third scene the whole 
word. The audience had then to guess the word. It was a rule of the game that in each scene the clue-word had to be actually 
spoken.
SCENE I. (After an absence of five minutes the children entered the room 
for the first scene. The three boys played
leap frog, while Jane stood by as a sort of umpire.)
Jane: David, you mustn't avoid jumping over Henry.
David: His hump is too high for me.
Jane: Henry, put your back down.
Henry: If you interfere with me you will put my back up instead of down.
All: Ha! Ha! Ha! (Exeunt.)
SCENE II. (The audience had not only to wait a long time for this scene, 
but had also to sit in a corner, huddled up
and shut off by a screen. What the audience saw when the screen was removed 
is shown in our picture. The scene represented a hospital ward. Jane was a 
nurse, Jocelyn was a doctor, Henry and
David were patients.)
Jane: This way, please, doctor. The patients are in this ward.
Jocelyn: A slight accident, I see.
Henry (excitedly): A slight accident indeed! A terrible smash-up, doctor. 
And all the other fellow's fault. My chauffeur
here (indicating David) is a very careful driver. He was driving me slowly 
along in my Rolls-Royce when suddenly
Jane: There, there! Please don't excite yourself, sir. Just let the doctor 
examine your injuries.
Jocelyn: I see somebody has been rendering first aid; and doing it very 
well, too.
Jane (demurely): You see, sir, I was once a girl guide.
Jocelyn (removing the bandages and examining the wounds): There's nothing 
much the matter with them; they'll soon
get well again. All they need is careful nursing and plain, nourishing food.
Henry: Not plain, doctor, not plain! (Exeunt.)
SCENE III. (A schoolroom, with Henry as schoolmaster, Jane and Jocelyn as pupils and David as a dunce.)
Henry (holding a cane and addressing David): A boy that is as backward in 
his history as you are, my lad, needs this
sort of remedy (brandishing the cane).
David: I don't like solid medicine; I like it out of a bottle.
Henry: It's not a question of what you like or don't like. I have to cure 
you of your bad memory. You forget because
you are lazy. You forget your dates, you forget your kings, you forget 
your battles. Such lapses I cannot forget – nor forgive. (The cane comes down, but David dodges and avoids the blow. 
Exeunt.)
The audience applauded the acting, and then tried to guess the word. The 
first three guesses were forget, forgive, and
history - all wrong. It was Jack Willett who guessed the right word, which 
was - .
-From "The Bargerys," by P. B. BALLARD, (University of London Press.)

BINJI.
A STORY FROM THE MALAY STATES,
My friend, Dick Scott, has two children, and he had for some time thought 
of getting them a dog. When on his last
vacation, he managed to buy one, a fine collie. They named him " Binji," 
and he turned out a wonderful dog, gentle,
and a grand watch-dog, and a delightful playmate for the children. Then a 
shipload of sheep from Australia were put
on the grazing land near the Scotts' place, to fatten. One night the 
flock stampeded, and in the morning there were
six dead sheep with torn throats.
It was Binji. There was no doubt of it. He had shreds of wool and blood 
on his muzzle, and his chain was broken.
After that he was kept at night on a chain strong enough to hold a 
leopard; but Binji was strong and he had tasted
blood. He broke loose again, and this time a cool dozen sheep were 
slaughtered. That afternoon I saw Binji for the
first time. He was curled up at Dick's feet in the club, a beautiful 
animal, and I admired him. " You may have him,"
said Dick. " He's a killer. I've paid for eighteen sheep and I don't 
intend to pay for any more."
Well, I didn't want a "killer," either; but I suddenly thought of 
something a dog would be good for. " All right," I said; "I'll take him."
Dick handed me the chain without a word. The dog looked first at Dick and 
then at me. His eyes were not reproachful,
just questioning. He came with me easily, indeed, seemed rather pleased.
Now, I wanted that dog for tiger bait. There's a dangerous tiger on my 
plantation, and it is difficult to get permission to
shoot a tiger, although one may be trapped alive. I had had a log trap 
built, with a slide door that works when a trigger
is pulled, and all I needed was a good bait - something that would howl and make a 
racket at night. I decided to use this
sheep-killer.
I thought the animal would be savage, and now it seemed to me impossible 
that this gentle, loving dog was really a
sheep-killer. My plantation is eight miles up the river, and I didn't have 
to coax Binji into the launch; he came as if he
trusted me, as if he had been hoping all his life for this ride. He barked 
at the waves and caught bits of foam in his
teeth. Then he would slip his muzzle under my hand and look up at me as if 
to say, " We're having a grand time,
aren't we? "
I had supper. Binji lay on the floor looking up at me. He didn't beg for 
food: he just hoped. I'm afraid I threw him a few
scraps, a thing I never do with dogs at table, and it was nice to see the 
grateful look in his eyes when he caught a
scrap. On the verandah, afterwards, I lit my pipe and sat watching the 
stars. Presently Binji's head was on my knee.
He did not ask to be petted; he just put his big head there for 
companionship. I rose hastily to my feet and called my
houseboy. " Come on," I said; " we are going to bait that trap."
Binji came gladly. He delighted in this unexpected walk up the jungle 
trail. I could see the white-grey of his tail waving
as his nose explored the under-brush. I think a dog loves that more than 
anything - to be loose, free, but with a man behind to call his name in the dark. We reached the trap. It was only after the boy had 
left him tied in the cage that
Binji saw there was something queer in this business. He began to whine.
Binji was a killer, a bad dog. Dick Scott had been going to shoot him 
anyway. I told myself this as I walked back.
Behind I could hear Binji, howling now, loudly. " Dog make very fine tiger 
bait," my boy said. " He howl loud. Tiger come sure." That did not comfort me much. 
The beautiful dog, alone in the dark, and
somewhere near, a tiger that could silence him with one blow!
I went to bed, but I couldn't sleep. I thought of all sorts of queer 
things, and through them all I saw that dog: great
brown eyes, wrinkled nose, big paws soft and friendly against my leg. I 
began to reason. I had not a dog on the
place. Binji might be a sheep-killer, but here there were no sheep to kill! 
Why shouldn't I keep him?
It's strange how quickly a man can change his ideas. Until then I had 
wanted to trap that tiger. Now I hoped I hadn't
trapped him! Call it sentiment, if you please; call it Binji's wet muzzle 
on my knee in the car, his eagerness in the
boat, the look in his eyes as he lay at my feet; or call it plain 
dog-consciousness. I routed out my boy: " Come on!
we're going to get the dog out of the trap! " We covered that half-mile in 
quick time. You will understand if you've ever
had a dog.
As we drew near to the trap there was no sound; to me that meant that the 
tiger had got him. Then I heard a low
whine. Presently ahead I saw Binji, his black nose through the bars of the 
cage, his eyes shining into the torch's
beam, and that grey-white tail wagging friendship and confidence, as if to 
say: " Well, we've played this game long
enough; let's try another! " Untied, he came bounding out. He did not jump 
at me, but just came running up, eager,
his tail swishing and his red tongue hanging out. " Come on," I said, " 
we're going home, Binji." He ran down the trail
just as he had come up it, frisking, investigating, now far ahead, now 
close up just under my feet, sniffing and pure
dog.
Suddenly something happened, so quickly and so close that I could not even 
get the torch up - a dusky, rushing movement in the dark. I saw two spears of ivory gleaming, coming straight at me. I had 
stumbled on a wild boar protecting a sow with a litter. Two hundred pounds of fierce animal dynamite about to gore me! There 
was no getting my rifle up: it was all so quick, so sudden. And then a grey streak sprang 
from the black. I heard the boar grunt with the impact. I saw two gleaming tusks disappear in the dark. Then I heard Binji's cry of 
pain, followed by his low,
savage growl - his sheep-growl!
I shot the boar; and I found Binji's body with great rips in his breast, 
but with his strong white teeth firm and fast in the boar's throat.
 -Retold from "Tiger Bait ," by FRANK BUCK and  FERRIN FRASER in " The Reader's Digest."

THE MOWING OF A FIELD.
When I got out into the long grass the sun was not yet risen, but there 
were already many colours in the eastern
sky, and I made haste to sharpen my scythe, so that I might get to the 
cutting before the dew should dry. Some
say that it is best to wait till all the dew has risen, so as to get the 
grass quite dry from the very first. But, though it is
an advantage to get the grass quite dry, yet it is not worth while to wait 
till the dew has risen. In the first place you
lose many hours of work (and those the coolest), and next - which is more 
important - you lose that great ease and thickness in cutting which comes of the dew. So I at once began to sharpen the scythe.
There is an art also in the sharpening of a scythe, and it is worth describing carefully. Your blade must be dry, and that is why 
you will see men rubbing the scythe 
blade with grass before they whet it. Then
also your rubber must be quite dry, and on this account it is a good thing 
to lay it on your coat and keep it there
during all your day's mowing. The scythe you stand upright, with the blade 
pointing away from you, and you put your
left hand firmly on the back of the blade, grasping it: then you pass your 
rubber first down one side of the blade-edge
and then down the other, beginning near the handle and going on to the 
point and working quickly and hard. When
you first do this you will, perhaps, cut your hand; but it is only at first 
that such an accident will happen to you.
To tell when the scythe is sharp enough, this is the rule. First the 
stone clangs and grinds against the iron harshly;
then it rings musically to one note; then, at last it purrs as though the 
iron and stone were exactly suited. When you
hear this, your scythe is sharp enough; and I, when I heard it that June 
dawn, with everything quite silent except the birds, let down the scythe and bent myself to mow.
Mowing well and mowing badly - or rather not mowing at all - are separated by 
very little; as is also true of writing verse,
of playing the fiddle, and of dozens of other things. The bad or young or 
untaught mower does all these things: He
leaves great crescents of grass uncut. He digs the point of the scythe 
into the ground with a jerk. He loosens the
handles and even the fastening of the blade. He twists the blade with his 
blunders, he blunts the blade, he chips it,
dulls it or breaks it clean off at the tip. If any one is standing by he 
cuts him in the ankle. He sweeps up into the air
wildly, with nothing to resist his stroke. He drags up earth with the 
grass, which is like making the meadow bleed.
But the good mower, who does things just as they should be done and have 
been for a hundred thousand years, falls
into none of these fooleries. He goes forward very steadily, his scythe 
blade just barely missing the ground, every
grass falling; the swish and rhythm of his mowing are always the same.
So great an art can be learnt only by continual practice; but this much 
is worth writing down, that, as in all good work,
to know the thing with which you work is the core of the affair. Good 
verse is best written on good paper with an easy
pen, not with a lump of coal on a whitewashed wall. The pen thinks for 
you; and so does the scythe mow for you if you treat it honourably and in a manner which makes it recognize its service. The 
manner is this:
You must regard the scythe as a pendulum that swings, not as a knife that 
cuts. A good mower puts no more
strength into his stroke than into his lifting. Again, stand up to your 
work. The bad mower, eager and full of pain, leans
forward and tries to force the scythe through the grass. The good mower, 
serene and able, stands as nearly straight
as the shape of the scythe will let him, and follows up every stroke 
closely, moving his left foot forward. Then also let
every stroke get well away. Mowing is a thing of ample gestures, like 
drawing a cartoon. Then again get yourself into
a mechanical and repetitive mood; be thinking of anything at all but your 
mowing, and be anxious only when there
seems some interruption to the monotony of the sound.
In this way, when I had recovered the art after many years, I went forward 
over the field, cutting lane after lane
through the grass, and bringing out its most secret essences with the sweep 
of the scythe until the air was full of odours. At the end of every lane I sharpened my scythe and looked back at the work done, 
and then carried my scythe down again upon my shoulder to begin another.
-From " Hills and the Sea' " by HILAIRE BELLOC. (Methuen.)

ADVENTURES ON THE ROAD     
Mr. Pickwick found his three companions awaiting his arrival to commence 
breakfast. They sat down to the meal, and
ham, eggs, tea, coffee, and sundries began to disappear with great speed.
" Now, about Manor Farm," said Mr. Pickwick. "How shall we go? "
"Perhaps we had better consult the waiter," said Mr. Tupman, and the 
waiter was summoned accordingly.
" Dingley Dell, gentlemen? Fifteen miles, gentlemen. Post-chaise, sir? "
" The post-chaise won't hold more than two," said Mr. Pickwick.
" True, sir: beg your pardon, sir. Very nice four-wheeled chaise, sir; seat for two behind; one in front for the gentleman that 
drives. Oh, beg your pardon, sir, that'll only hold three."
" What's to be done? " said Mr. Snodgrass.
" Perhaps one of the gentlemen would like to ride, sir? " suggested the 
waiter, looking towards Mr. Winkle. " Very good saddle-horses, sir."
" The very thing," said Mr. Pickwick. " Winkle, will you go on horseback?"
Mr. Winkle had great doubts in his own heart about his skill in riding; 
but, as he would not on any account have
anyone know about them, he replied at once with great hardihood, "Certainly.
I should enjoy it, of all things." Mr. Winkle had rushed upon his fate. 
There was no drawing back now.
" Let them be at the door by eleven," said Mr. Pickwick.
" Very well, sir," replied the waiter.
Mr. Pickwick was ready and was looking through the inn window at the people 
in the street when the waiter
announced that the chaise was there, and the vehicle appeared before the 
window. It was a curious little green box
with a low place for two behind, and a high perch for one in front, drawn 
by an immense and bony brown horse. A
groom stood near, holding by the bridle another immense horse, which looked 
like a brother of the one between the
shafts of the chaise. This latter animal was ready saddled for Mr. Winkle.
" Bless my soul! " said Mr. Pickwick, as they stood upon the pavement. "Who's to drive? I didn't think of that."
" Oh, you, of course," said Mr. Tupman.
" Of course," said Mr. Snodgrass.
"I?" exclaimed Mr. Pickwick.
"Not the slightest fear, sir," said the groom. "Warrant him quiet, sir. An infant in arms could drive him."
" He doesn't shy, does he?" inquired Mr. Pickwick.
" Shy, sir? He wouldn't shy if he met a wagon load of monkeys with their 
tails burnt off."
There was no more to be said. Mr. Tupman and Mr. Snodgrass got in behind. 
Mr. Pickwick climbed to his perch and
put his feet on the little shelf provided for that purpose.
" Now, Shiny William," said the groom to his assistant, " give the 
gentleman the ribbons." Shiny William - so called,probably, from his sleek hair
and oily face - placed the reins in Mr. Pickwick's left hand, and the head 
groom thrust a whip into his right hand.
"Wo-o," cried Mr. Pickwick, as the tall creature showed a desire to back 
into the coffee-room window.
" Wo-o," echoed Mr. Tupman and Mr. Snodgrass from behind.
" Only his playfulness, gentlemen," said the head groom. " Just catch hold 
of him, William." The assistant did as he
was told, and the head groom ran to help Mr. Winkle in mounting.
" T'other side, sir, if you please."
" Bothered if the gentleman wasn't getting up on the wrong side," whispered 
a grinning post-boy to the delighted waiter.
Mr. Winkle, thus instructed, climbed into his saddle, with about as much 
difficulty as he would have had in getting up
the side of a battleship.
" All right? " asked Mr. Pickwick, feeling that it was all wrong.
" All right," replied Mr. Winkle faintly.
" Let 'em go," cried the groom. " Hold him in, sir," and away went the 
chaise and the saddle-horse, with Mr. Pickwick on the box of the one, and Mr. Winkle on the back of the other, to the huge 
delight of the whole inn yard.
" What makes him go sideways? " said Mr. Snodgrass in the chaise to Mr. 
Winkle in the saddle.
" I can't imagine," replied Mr. Winkle. His horse was drifting up the 
street in the most mysterious manner, side first,
with his head towards one side of the way and his tail towards the other.
Mr. Pickwick had no time to notice this or anything else, having quite 
enough to do in managing the horse attached to
the chaise, which was playing tricks highly interesting to a bystander, but 
much less amusing to anyone seated
behind him. He constantly jerked his head up in a very unpleasant and uncomfortable 
manner. He tugged at the reins so hard that Mr.
Pickwick could scarcely hold them. He darted suddenly, every now and 
then, to the side of the road, then stopping
short, and then rushing forward for some minutes at a rapid pace.
"What can he mean by this? " said Mr. Snodgrass, when the horse did it 
for the twentieth time.
" I don't know," replied Mr. Tupman. " It looks very much like shying, 
doesn't it? "
Mr. Snodgrass was about to reply when he was interrupted by a shout from 
Mr. Pickwick: "Wo-o! I've dropped my whip."
" Winkle," said Mr. Snodgrass, as the rider trotted up on the tall horse, 
with his hat over his ears, and shaking all over
as if he would shake to pieces, " pick up the whip; there's a good 
fellow."
Mr. Winkle pulled at the horse's bridle till he was black in the face; 
and having at length succeeded in stopping him,
dismounted, handed the whip to Mr. Pickwick, and, grasping the reins, 
prepared to remount.
Now, whether the tall horse wanted to have a little fun with Mr. Winkle, 
or whether it had occurred to him that he could
perform the journey quite as well without a rider as with one, is 
unknown. It is certain that, no sooner had Mr. Winkle
touched the reins, than the animal slipped them over his head and darted 
backwards to their full length.
" Poor fellow," remarked Mr. Winkle soothingly, "poor fellow - good old 
horse.".
The poor fellow was proof against flattery. The more Mr. Winkle tried to 
get near him, the more he sidled away. There
were Mr. Winkle and the horse going round and round each other for ten minutes, at the end of which time each was as far from 
the other as
when they began - unsatisfactory at any time, but particularly so on a 
lonely road.
"What am I to do?" shouted Mr. Winkle after the dodging had gone on for a 
long time. " What am I to do? I can't get
near him."
" You had better lead him," replied Mr. Pickwick from the chaise.
" But he won't come," roared Mr. Winkle. " Do come and hold him."
Mr. Pickwick was the very soul of kindness. He threw down his reins, 
climbed from the seat, and carefully drew the
chaise to the side of the road, lest anyone should come along. Having 
done this, he stepped back to help Mr. Winkle, leaving Mr. Tupman and Mr. Snodgrass in the carriage.
Mr. Winkle's horse no sooner beheld Mr. Pickwick advancing towards him 
with the chaise whip in his hand, than he
stopped going round and round and began to back, dragging Mr. Winkle 
after him at a rather quicker rate than fast
walking. Mr. Pickwick ran to his assistance, but the faster Mr. Pickwick 
ran forward, the faster the horse ran
backward. There was a great scraping of feet and kicking up of dust. At 
last Mr. Winkle, his arms nearly out of their
sockets, let go his hold on the bridle. The horse paused, shook his head, 
turned round, and quietly trotted home,
leaving Mr. Winkle and Mr. Pickwick gazing at each other in blank dismay.
A rattling noise made them look up.
" Bless my soul! " exclaimed Mr. Pickwick in horror. " There's the other 
horse running away!"
It was but too true. The animal had been startled by the noise, and the 
reins were on his back. The result may be guessed. He tore off with the chaise, behind him, and Mr. Snod.grass and Mr. Tupman 
in it.
The run was a short one. Mr. Tupman threw himself into the hedge, Mr. 
Snodgrass did likewise, the horse dashed the
carriage against a wooden bridge, separated the wheels from the body, and 
the front from the back, and finally stood
stock still and gazed upon the ruin he had made.
The first care of Mr. Pickwick and Mr. Winkle was to pull their unfortunate 
companions out of their prickly bed. They
had sustained no injury except that their clothes were torn and their hands
and faces were scratched by the brambles. The next thing was to unharness 
the horse. This took a long time. When
it was done the party walked slowly forward, leading the horse, and abandoning the chaise to its fate. It was late in the afternoon 
when the four friends and their four-footed companion turned into a lane leading to Manor Farm. And
even when they were so near the end of their weary tramp, the pleasure they 
might have felt was damped as they thought of their torn clothes, scratched faces, dusty shoes, tired looks, and, above all, the 
horse.
-Adapted from the " Pickwick Papers,'' by
CHARLES DICKENS.

POTENTATES IN PIFFLATONIA.
The Queen of Pifflatonia took several long-drawn-out glances at herself in 
the mirror, and thought she looked rather well in her new robes of blue
and silver; and she was pleased that she looked slightly special because it 
was the day of the reception to the thirty-nine potentates. She
gave a little finishing touch to her crown, which knocked it a little sideways so 
that one of her maids had to put it straight again; and she went to find the King.
"Bother these potentate sort of people," the King was saying as he strode 
rapidly all over the palace, " look what's happening outside."
 "Good gracious! " the Queen exclaimed, forgetting to ask the King how he 
thought she looked in her new robes.
Outside in the courtyard there was a most unheard-of muddle. The potentates 
were arriving. Some of them were so oriental that they were
arriving in the most unexpected sort of manner. Some, but not many, had 
come in carriages; some on elephants; some on camels. One of them had driven up on a. tricycle sort of thing he had borrowed 
from a shop without asking if he might,
because he was used to taking what he liked in his own country where everything belonged to him.
Three other potentates, who were friends had come in a motor 'bus which they had insisted on driving 
themselves, and
this was stuck half-way across the gates of the palace, because none of the potentates understood 
motor 'buses,
and they were all trying to drive it at once.
Servants ran here and there; officials sent them running back again. Policemen stood about taking  
notes and having
the most extreme spots of bother when it came to spelling the potentates' names, some of which could 
not be spelt
at all, but had to be sung. And all the time more potentates were arriving and having to stop 
outside the gates, while frantic
efforts were being made to shift the wedged-in motor 'bus.
" Look at it," moaned the King, wringing his hands. " Whatever shall we do? It is terrible, and 
twenty-two potentates
still to arrive! "
"Why didn't you put up notices 'Keep to the left or something? " said the Queen.
"Notices!" exploded  the King. " Potentates don't take notice of notices; they are much too - too-too-" he finished, not being able 
to think 
of the right word. "And anyway, they wouldn't
understand what the notices said."
" It seems to me," said the Queen, catching sight of herself in an extra large mirror, and thinking that 
she looked even
better in a big mirror than she did in a small one. But nobody ever heard what seemed to her, because 
just then there was a loud
crash. The motor 'bus came unwedged from the gates, and a definitely large potentate riding on a very grown-up elephant
came majestically into the courtyard, followed by all the rest of the potentates who had been waiting outside.
" Come on," cried the King, growing excited. He rushed into the throne room and sat down so suddenly on the wrong throne that 
the Queen nearly fell over him. Just then, in popped the Lord 
Chamberlain with his hat
on backwards, which did not matter as he took it off at once.
"Potentates all here, Majesty," he said in a rather flurried sort of voice. Shall reception begin?"
"Yes," said the King.
" No," said the Queen. " Wait a moment till we change seats." They got up to do so, but the King sat on part of the Queen's robes 
so that she
couldn't get near enough to her throne to sit quite on it. Before they could do anything about it, the 
Chief Herald
announced in a very loud voice, " His Supreme Loftiness the Squeejee of Flattenout."
The Royal reception had begun. The Queen would have to sit as she was, only partly on her throne, 
which became
very uncomfortable, but nothing could be done about it, because it was not considered royal in 
Pifflatonia to wriggle
about during receptions.
The Squeejee strode into the throne room, made an elaborate bow, and strode out at the other door.
"Everything going well so far," muttered the  King, trying to talk without moving his lips, but not 
succeeding very well.
The Queen did not answer, probably because she was too uncomfortable sitting only partly on the 
throne.
On went the reception. By went the potentates. Then as the Lord Chamberlain, who was sending them in, began to get used
to it, the potentates began to go by more and more quickly, and the  Chief Herald shouted their names 
louder and
louder.
"His Imperial Climax the Rampage of Rooloorania; His Oblique Zenith the Crashdown of Clattasmak; His Exalted
Prominence the Dictator of Diddinott."
" Wonderful! " thought the King, not bothering to try to say it, while the Queen was thinking "Thank goodness, it
will soon be over if they come up at this rate."
Then in came two potentates together because they were special friends and would not be separated. They 
were the
Konkah of Katchakatt and the Doodah of Dodjadoggie. They came in together, they bowed together, they 
went out
together; and the Chief Herald, who had not had time to announce one of them, let alone both, became 
muddled
because the rest of the potentates began coming in two at a time. He was announcing things like, "His Extreme
Elevation M-m-m-w-w-k-k  and Their Several Excellencies the Watsanames of Somewhere."
Quicker and quicker came the potentates, more  and more at a time, until they were beginning to 
jammed in the
doorway. The King grew dizzy  with nodding to them as they shot past him. The  Queen shut her eyes and 
hoped for the
best but
feared the worst. The Lord Chamberlain ran round in
circles. "Another eight, six more, twelve of the same," the Herald was shouting as if he were ordering something at a shop.
Then, good gracious! In came the Squeejee of Flattenout again, closely followed by His Regal Summit the 
Swali of
Swallobitz and his Unlikely
 Possibility the Iffican of Prapso. The potentates were so oriental they thought the more times they 
could go in and
out and bow to the King and Queen, the greater honour it was to them. The reception was therefore 
starting all over
again, but this time the potentates were going past four
times as rapidly as they did the first time. The Herald had given up attempting to announce anybody, and 
was simply
counting them off in half dozens in a very hoarse whisper. More and more quickly they shot by, some of 
them not even
stopping to bow. The King was rubbing his eyes and could not understand anything.
Then, just as the Queen was about to sit down properly on the throne, and never mind if she did split 
her robes, there
was a slight gap in the stream of potentates. The definitely large potentate, who had come on the elephant, 
had stopped just
outside the door to tie up his umpawallah, and nobody else could get in.
"Quick! " gasped the King. " This reception will go on for ever if we don't do something. Let us hide, 
and then they'll think
the reception is over
and go home."
He grabbed the Queen's hand. They rushed across the throne room and hid behind a screen, only just in 
time. The
next second in came the large potentate with his umpawallah nicely tied, and after him streamed all 
the other thirty-eight potentates.
" Gracious! " cried the large potentate in his  own language when he saw the empty thrones.
Then the potentates, who thought it was all part of the reception, began to hunt for the King and Queen. 
In and out of the rooms they went; up and down the stairs; round passages
and corridors. And, whether they understood receptions or not, they were so used to hunting tigers 
in jungles and searchish sort of things of that kind, that they soon
discovered their Majesties behind the screen.
The palace rang with the assorted oriental cheers of thirty-nine potentates, who had enjoyed hunting for the King and Queen even 
more than they enjoyed hunting for
tigers, because it was not so dangerous. And hurray! the reception was safely over. The Lord Chamberlain 
had arranged for refreshments, and the potentates thought
Pifflatonia was certainly the most charming kingdom one could wish to visit.
-NORMAN HUNTER, in " Our Darlings' Treasure  House." (John Shaw.) Slightly adapted.

THE CURE'S BOOTS.
Everyone that knew him agreed that Cure Dagnet of Issy-en-Vilaine was a saint. He had no money of 
his own, for he gave all his earnings to needy or greedy poor of his
flock, greatly to the disgust of his housekeeper, Ursule. She, however, being a loyal soul, told only herself 
that a fool and his money were soon parted, and assured the rest of the world
that the cure could do as he liked with own property. In matters of dress the cure was always neat. 
Ursule saw to that. Every Friday, when he paid her a week's wages,
she levied an additional toll of twenty francs and hid it in a place known only to herself. With this 
fund she renewed her master's cassocks and underclothing; otherwise he 
would have ministered in rags and tatters. One day the cure appeared among his people in sandals, which 
caused a lot of gossip but added to his reputation.
"He has given away his boots to the needy," surmised a widow, who had lived for many years on his charity, and the account of 
yet another good deed passed into village history. Matters, however, had not been quite so straightforward as that. Satan tempts 
simple souls 
by simple means, and he had ambushed and almost destroyed a good
man.
 It all began at a church celebration and fair at Moncontour, where the cure had been asked to preach. 
His short vacation was quite an event,  and, with his nightshirt and
razor in a brown-paper parcel under his arm and his breviary and notes in his pocket, he travelled by 
'bus and then by  motor-coach, reaching Moncontour late in the  afternoon,
and preaching that evening to a very  large congregation. The cure had ten francs and a return ticket 
in his pocket and, although he loved
to see happy faces, he found little fun at the fair, so at ten o'clock the following morning he went to the square to catch his coach 
for home. The coach was to be half
an hour late, and meanwhile Cure Dagnet walked from booth to booth inspecting articles of clothing, 
biscuits, bon-bons, coloured drinks, and toffee sticks.
Finally he stood in the front of a crowd round the stall of the inventor of " Saam," the wonder boot 
restorer. The polish genius, with one hand in a large and shiny shoe
and the other brandishing a duster, spoke fluently of his wares. " This polish doubles the life of 
shoes," purred the huckster. "Rubbed well into the uppers it renders them
supple, wear-resisting, shining-black, and irreproachable. Painted on the soles, it makes them waterproof and 
durable and prevents cracking. Look!" Drawing forth from under the
stall a dirty shoe, in a short time he had transformed it by liquid from his bottle into a shining, 
lacquered object, in which he invited the cure to look at his reflection.
" Five francs a bottle," concluded the bright-eyed salesman, and the crowd immediately melted away, 
leaving the cure and the cheap-jack face to face  and alone. The
heart of the little priest grew sad at the sight of the baffled face and drooping shoulders before 
him. Hastily he drew out his purse from beneath his cassock and handed
five  francs to the huckster. A bottle changed hands, and the cure had just time to dash for his 
coach.
The cure had given a full account of his travels to Ursule and enjoyed a supper of raw onions and cheese, 
before his thoughts turned in the direction of his feet. Furtively he
raised his cassock so that the rays of the oil lamp fell on his boots. They were solid and 
serviceable enough for a parish priest, and they bore the white film of Breton road-dust. The cure gently rubbed one of the toe-
caps on 
his black stocking, and inspected it again. It was grey and sad-looking from
lack of expert attention: old Ursule usually cleaned the boots hurriedly at night, often using the 
blacklead and
boot-polishing brushes indiscriminately.
The priest, putting on a bold front, produced his bottle of polish and announced his intention of 
cleaning his own boots. Contrary to his expectations, Ursule showed no
signs of rebellion at this encroachment. She brought him out rags, brushes, and scraping knife, while the cure took off his boots 
and put on a pair of sandals, which he sometimes  wore
about the house and garden. He rolled up the sleeves of his habit, carefully
read the directions on the label of the bottle and set about his task. Half an hour later the good man 
washed the black from his hands and face and went to bed. The moonlight
filtered through the casement of the little house beside the church, and picked out in the middle of the 
hearthrug a pair of large boots, shining like polished jet.
The cure rose at five, for his parish was a large one calling for a full day of labour. He thanked God for 
the beauty of the misty fields in which the
labourers were already working, dressed, put on his boots and hastened to the church to perform his
early office. As he walked along the well-worn path between the wallflowers, his boots shone as they had 
never shone before, reflecting the bright early sunlight. Instead of
preparing his mind for the coming duties, the priest thought of boot-polish and dusters. During the service 
the reds and yellows of the dresses of saints and soldiers in the
church windows flickered around his feet. He found it difficult to concentrate his mind on the task in
hand and to prevent his lips speaking apart from 
his heart. On the way back to breakfast bright
points of light twinkled round the edges of his
skirts as his feet rose and fell.
 That afternoon the cure paid his weekly visit to
the village school. Seated before a mixed class of
children in an atmosphere charged with the odours
of kitchen soap, sweat, and the stale tobacco from last
night's political meeting, he crossed his legs and
concentrated on the brightest spot in the drab room - 
his boots. He listened to the teacher hard at work
and, at last, only with difficulty tore himself from 
the state of semi-hypnosis induced by the points of
light before him, and asked questions on scripture,
faith, and general knowledge.
 So the day passed. The villagers who met him
remarked on the abstracted air of their priest. To
the elders he was not himself., with the youngsters he lacked his customary simplicity and quick sympathy. His mind was 
elsewhere, but he did not
consciously know it. Late in the afternoon he took
his walk to the rocky beach, reading his breviary, 
with his boots flickering round the edges of the
pages. Serreau, the fisherman, was taking out his
boat to the lobster pots.
 " Coming, Father? " he called, and the cure hurried to join him. On the way to the pots he could not talk of the state of the sea 
and the
catches in the manner that endeared him to his fisherfolk.  Instead, the light of the sea and sky
gathered round his feet and drew his thoughts. 
Serreau gave him a lobster for his supper and set
him ashore as dusk fell. "Something's wrong with
the parson," he said to his wife that evening.
" Going to preach at the Big Pardon seems to have
turned his head. Always he's been first in and out of the boat, slopping through the water with 
his boots on and helping me to launch and beach her. To-day he was like a cat in the rain, picking  his
way through the puddles like a woman from
Paris."
As the priest strode home the darkness fell. The lobster under his arm began to writhe in an effort to
release its string-tied claw, and, as the cure paused beside a hedge to adjust the newspaper round his
supper, he heard the voices of two poachers
whom he well knew. " Must be in some kind of
trouble . . . passed me by Cully's farm with head down and didn't even see me . . .
Youngster says he seemed asleep at school to-day
and then woke up and asked them a lot of silly questions . . . if you ask me the cure's going
soft through doing too much running about at everybody's beck and call and getting nothing for it …" The voices died away, 
leaving the little priest wrestling with his lobster
and his conscience in the moonlight.
The one having been quieted, the good man
turned to the other. What had come over him? Why were his people talking of him? He surveyed his 
work of the past month and found little out of
the ordinary in it. Certainly to-day he had lacked concentration, yes, and piety too. He had allowed 
his thoughts to wander during the most sacred of his tasks. He raised his
face to the stars and prayed for guidance and forgiveness. Then he lowered his gaze to the ground 
and saw his boots. They shone in the moonlight with a silvery glow. The cure's eyes were opened.
"You have led me into temptation," he said to his feet; and sitting on the roadside he slowly unlaced 
his boots and removed them. There he stood with them in his hand, and
even as he looked at them his heart was filled with pleasure at their
bright well-being. He saw himself in a new cassock and elegant silk shovel hat like those worn by the church dignitaries in 
the city, all to match his bright boots. And he saw himself
mincing his way daintily through the wet grass and muddy lanes of his dear Breton countryside or tripping across wet beaches 
to the fishing boats like a vixen trying to keep her pads dry. He shuddered and flung his boots far from him. They fell with a plop 
in Cartier's Pool, and the cure walked home in 
his stockinged feet.
Of course, Ursule could not see his point of view. He was just tired after his trip to Moncontour and had not been himself 
that day. Still there was no excuse for throwing away a good
pair of boots. Why hadn't he walked through the mud in them if they distracted him with their shining? "What are you going to 
do 
now? " she said. "You haven't  another pair of
boots, having spent the money for the extra pair you should have ordered on clothes for the Lejeunes' seventh baby."
" I'll wear my sandals until Bourreaux can make me a new pair, well-oiled and without any shine," replied her master.
" Sandals! In lanes like ours! You'll have no feet left," gibbered the old woman, making mental calculations concerning the 
hoard of clothing-money hidden beneath the chancel carpet.
"That will be my penance," said the cure. "Meanwhile, I think you might put the lobster out of his misery. There will be enough 
for two."
So the good priest of Issy-en-Vilaine lost his boots and saved his soul.
-GEORGE BELLAIRS, in " Penguin Parade 2." (Adapted.)

MY MOTHER'S OTHER SON.
I had a brother who was far away at school. I remember very little about him, only that he was a  
merry-faced boy who ran like a squirrel up a tree and shook the cherries into my lap.
When he was thirteen and I was half his age the terrible news came, and the face of my mother was 
awful in its  calmness as she set off to get between Death and her boy.
We trooped with her down the brae to the station. She had bidden us good-bye with that fighting face, 
when my father came out of the telegraph office and said huskily, "He's gone!" Then
we turned very quietly and went home again  up the little brae.
That is how my mother got her soft face and her pathetic ways and her large charity, and why other 
mothers ran to her when they had lost a child. She was always delicate from that
hour, and for many months she was very ill.
It was shortly after the first day that my older sister came to me with anxious face and told me to go 
to my mother and remind her that she still had another boy. I went excitedly,
but the room was dark, and when I heard the door shut and no sound come from the bed I 
was afraid, and I stood still. I suppose I was breathing hard, or
perhaps crying, for after a time I heard a listless voice, which had never been listless before, say, 
"Is that you?" I think the tone hurt me, for I made no answer; and then the
voice said more anxiously, " Is that you? " again. I thought it was the dead boy she was speaking to, 
and I said in a lonely voice, " No, it's no' him; it's just me." Then I heard a
cry, and my mother turned in bed, and though it was dark I knew she was holding out her arms.
After that I sat a great deal on her bed trying to make her forget him; and, if I saw anyone out of 
doors do something that made the others laugh, I immediately hastened to
that dark room and did it before her. I suppose I was an odd little figure. I have been told that my 
anxiety to brighten her gave my face a strained look and put a tremor into the
joke. I would stand on my head in the bed, my feet against the wall, and then cry excitedly, " Are 
you laughing, Mother? " and perhaps what made her laugh was something I
was unconscious of. She did, however, laugh suddenly now and then, whereupon I screamed exultantly to 
my sister to come and see the sight, but by the time she came the
soft face was wet again. Thus I was deprived of some of my glory, and I remember only once making her 
laugh before witnesses.
I kept a record of her laughs on a piece of paper, a stroke for each. There were five strokes the 
first time I showed it to the doctor and, when their meaning was explained to
him, he laughed so boisterously that I cried, " I wish that was one of hers! " Then he was 
sympathetic, and said that, if I showed the paper to Mother now and told her these
were her five laughs, he thought I might win another. I did as he bade me, and not only did she laugh 
then, but again when I put that laugh down, so that, though it was really one laugh with a tear in the middle, I counted it as two.
My sister told me not to sulk when my mother lay thinking of him, but to try to get her to talk 
about him. I did not see how this could make her the merry mother
she used to be, but I was told that if I could not do it nobody could, and this made me eager to 
begin. At first I was often jealous, stopping her fond memories with
the cry, " Do you mind nothing about me?" but that did not last. Its place was taken by an intense 
desire (again, I think my sister must have breathed it into life) to become
so like him that even my mother should not see the difference, and many and artful were the questions 
I put to that end.
Then I practised in secret, but after a whole week had passed I was still rather like myself. He had 
such a cheery way of whistling, she had told me, it had always
brightened her at her work, and when he whistled he stood with his legs apart and his hands in the 
pockets of his knickerbockers. One day, therefore, after I had learned his
whistle (every boy of enterprise invents a whistle of his own) from boys who had been his comrades, I secretly put on a suit of 
his clothes, which fitted me many years
afterward, and slipped into my mother's room. Quaking, yet pleased, I stood still until she saw me and 
then-how it must have hurt her!-" Listen! " I cried in a glow of triumph,     
and I stretched my legs apart and plunged my hands into the pockets of my knickerbockers, and began to whistle.
After  some months, her face rippled with mirth  as before, and her laugh, which I had tried so hard to force, came running home 
again.
-Condensed from "Margaret Ogilvy," by J. M. BARRIE. (Charles Scribner and Sons.)

GREEN SOCKS.
"A man bought twenty-five pairs of green socks and twenty-five pairs of 
blue, and mixed them all up in a drawer," said
Parsloe, his spectacles gleaming with the fanatical light of the 
riddle-addict.
" He must have been mad," I said weakly, my eyes roving restlessly about 
the room in search of escape.
" He was," said Parsloe curtly.
I sat up and allowed my eyes to focus on the Parsloe pest.
" Proceed Parsloe, proceed," I begged. " You interest me strangely."
" Twenty-five blue pairs and twenty-five green pairs of the same texture 
all jumbled up together in a drawer - have yougot that? "
" That's a hundred socks at a buying," I pointed out. " Are you talking about a man or a centipede? "
Parsloe ignored this sally and continued to develop his problem. " One night he went up to change and found his light had fused. 
Now, you must answer the question quite quickly: not spend a lot of time making calculations."
"What question, you egg? You haven't asked me anything yet."
" The one I'm going to ask you. Now, remember the light has failed; the 
nearest light is down two flights of stairs; and
there are twenty-five pairs of green socks and twenty-five pairs of blue 
mixed up -"
"Yes, yes, you said all that. Now, what do you want to know? How long 
would it take the centipede to change its socks in the dark? "
"What is the least number of socks he must take downstairs to the light 
in order to make sure of having a pair when he gets there? He doesn't mind if it's a blue pair 
or a green pair, but he must have two of one
colour?
" One minute," I said. " What will be the good of getting only his socks 
right! What about the rest of his dressing?
He'll obviously have to take a light up. I suppose he has another drawer 
with twenty-five pairs of green ties and twenty-five pairs of blue –"
"We'll take it that he's only going to change his socks."
"Be reasonable, Parsloe. What manner of man is this who dresses for dinner by 
changing into a pair of green socks!"
" I said he was mad," said Parsloe simply. " You're afraid to answer the 
question."
But I had been doing some hard thinking. " Fifty-one," I said boldly.
Parsloe laughed harshly. " Three," he said. "At least two of them must be 
the same colour."
What nonsense! " I said. "Suppose all three were green?
" Then he'd have a green pair and one green over." Parsloe swelled with 
pride, while I blushed hotly.
" Do you know the one about the three men and the five discs? " the fiend 
continued, warming to his wicked work. "Three white and two black;
and the men had all -" 
" Stop! " I cried. " It's my innings. I refuse to listen to your colour 
problem unless you get this right. It's very easy,
but it must be answered straight off without any pause for thought."
Parsloe, gave me his attention with an air of confidence.
" The opposite of 'Not in'", I flung at him. "Quick, quick -"
"Out," said Parsloe.
It was my turn to laugh brutally, as I turned and left him.
-J. B. E. in Punch." (slightly adapted.)

GINGER.
This story has a Hero, but no Plot; at least, the little Plot, such as it 
is, died with the Hero, and that is why it
interests me. It has a Clue, and the Clue lies upon my cabin table as I 
write; but the Clue will never be followed up,
and Heaven knows what sorrowful little tragedy it holds in secret.
It so happens that most of my professional life has been spent in 
south-east London. I love south-east London with all
its squalor and apparent monotony. I love the changing kaleidoscope of 
characters that tumble before me through the
years. And it sometimes happens that part of the pattern repeats itself, 
and I get little glimpses - years apart – of characters whom I had not expected to meet again. So here are three little glimpses, 
slight and transient enough in themselves, but sufficient, perhaps, to touch your sympathy as they did mine.
Glimpse the first: A drear November evening some twelve years ago, hazy and 
very cold; great motor-omnibuses
barking ominously and skidding in the thin black mud; frowsy women, grouped 
in the glare of the public houses, and
myself making my disconsolate way towards London Bridge.
I crossed the bridge and turned to look back at the river, and out of sheer 
aimless curiosity I climbed over the iron
railing and descended the stairway that leads down to the water at the back 
of Old Swan Pier. It was dark down
below. The huge arches loomed black and terrifying; and at my feet ran the river, 
black as sin and chuckling hideously. All was
silent and dark, and I was quite alone.
What was that? Suddenly, close at my side, there came a little terrified 
moan. I turned my head and thought I saw a
movement in the darkest shadow of the pier, and I stepped hurriedly 
towards it.
" Let me alone; I ain't done nothing! " came a child's voice, small and 
terrified out of the shadow.
" Why, what's the matter? " I asked. " Nobody's going to hurt you, Tommy! 
Why are you down here? "
There was a pause. "I'm frightened," he whispered at last.
" Of course you're frightened," I said, and his hand was ice-cold and 
shaking as I tried his pulse, "of course you're frightened down here by the river in the dark!"
" I ain't afraid of the river, and I ain't afraid of the dark," he said 
with a touch of resentment.
"It's my mother "; and again came the little terrified moan that had 
startled me before.
" Well, look here, my son," I said, "you mustn't stay down here. Come 
along with me and I'll try to put things right. I'm
a doctor. What's your name? "
" Ginger," said the boy.
" Ginger? Ginger what?
" Just Ginger, because of my hair," he said.
" Right, Ginger. And where do you live? "
He gave me the address - a dismal slum. I knew it well.
" Well, the first thing to be done," I said, " is to get some hot coffee 
inside you." We made our way to a little coffee-stall, and I ordered a couple of steaming mugs.
I looked at the boy. He seemed to be about ten years old; his coat was much too big for him, as were his boots; and wisps of 
stocking half covered his legs. He did not, however, appear to be ill-made, only painfully thin and incredibly dirty.
His eyes were very large - indeed, his face was so
thin that he seemed to be all eyes; and as far as
I could see for dirt his features did not at all
suggest the typical slum child. His hair was
tumbled and matted, and fell in shocks over his
eyebrows, but it was not " ginger," it was rather of
a deep copper colour, or would be when washed;
but in the slums, " ginger " is the term for reds
of all shades.
" Well, come along," I said presently, " and tell me about your mother."
"She ain't my mother," said the boy.
This was rather a baffling start. " Your father, then." I asked.
"He ain't my father," he said.
Baffler number two! "But you spoke of your mother just now," I suggested.
" I live with Mrs. Bowles and her husband, and I call them mother and dad, 
but they ain't really. I never had any, not
to remember," he said.
I asked more questions as we threaded our way by slippery short cuts, but I 
did not get much out of him. Only once
did he come out of his half-stupor. " Sir, look! " he cried suddenly, 
tugging at my sleeve. We were passing a wharf
where the men were working furiously in the flaring gas-light, unloading 
square packing-cases and piling them into carts. The gas-light shone upon the great smokestack, the bridge, and the long white 
boats of a large tramp steamer.
"I love ships more than all the world," said Ginger suddenly to himself, 
and his eyes were gleaming in his dirty little face. It was so
unexpected that I literally started.  I
We reached the dingy slum at last. The door of twenty-seven stood open, and 
the whole female population of the
street appeared to be gathered around it. I soon found that there had been 
a sordid tragedy; and now Ginger had no
home and no parents, even of a makeshift kind.
" I'll take the lad to the Home," I said to the constable. " Come along, 
Ginger! There isn't anything you want to take
with you, is there? " With a quick gesture the boy thrust his hand into his 
shirt. " No sir, I've got it," he said.
That night Ginger slept in a dormitory with forty other homeless little 
creatures. But at least he went to bed washed and unwhipped, and slept between blankets.
So for two years Ginger went out of my life, and almost out of my thoughts, 
but not quite. Once I had occasion to
visit the Home and was told that Ginger had been sent on to the 
Sailor-boys' Training School, as I had suggested,
and was doing " exceedingly well"; and once I received a little limp 
Christmas card, forwarded from the Home - just a
robin with snow all over its face - and underneath was scrawled: " from your 
happy and affexionit ginger."
II.
Glimpse the second - and here we have no more murky low-tones, but colour and 
happiness, sun and sea and shining morning faces. I woke early to the sound of quavering bugles, and wondered 
dreamily where I was - I had arrived at
the Training Camp only the night before. I reached for the flap of my tent 
and looked out. The sun was already driving
the mist from the parade-ground. Five sleepy little buglers, bare-footed 
and with shirts hastily tucked into khaki trousers, were straining with only squeaky 
success to render the "Charley Up." An instructor
was striding down the long line of marquees, crying, " Hi-yi-yi-yi! Turn 
out there! Turn out! " And in a moment or two
youngsters came crawling in crowds from under the canvas and scampered to 
the washing troughs.
Five minutes later a little orderly in sailor uniform hurried in with a 
can of water from the kitchens. He placed the can
in my camp basin, turned and saluted, smiling all over his face. At once 
I knew who it was - there was no mistaking
that copper hair. But what a change! He had grown and filled out, and was 
now a lithe, strong lad, straight as an
arrow.
" Why, it's Ginger! " I exclaimed.
" Yessir," said the boy. " I heard you had come last night and I asked 
the captain if I might be your orderly. "
"That's capital," I said. "Why, Ginger, what a big fellow you've grown! 
How do you like it, and how are you getting on?"
" Oh, I'm fine, sir," said Ginger, and "fine" is the highest superlative 
these youngsters ever use.
" And when did they make you a petty officer?" I asked pointing to his 
badge.
"Last week, sir," said Ginger, full of pride.
"I'm band petty officer. I play the clarinet and I look after the kids in the band, and I get two and a minjy pay on
Saturday - that's twopence ha'penny, sir."
" I know! " I laughed. " This isn't my first camp, Ginger. So you really 
like school, do you? "
"School's fine! " he replied, " but I like camp best - the swimming and the 
sailing - they're fine. Will you want anything else before breakfast, sir?
"No thank you, Ginger."
"Right, sir," and with another salute he ran off. I was thinking about 
Ginger as I strolled to the officers' mess-tent - a
most unusual boy, not a bit like the ordinary slum lad, either in 
appearance or talk. I asked the captain about him at
breakfast.
"He's a first-class lad," he said, " and if you watch him at work or games 
you'll find he will always take the lead. We
have never been able to find out anything about his people, or who it was 
paid the man Bowles money, which he
spent in drink."
After breakfast, there was " sick-bay " for me to attend to, while the boys 
did physical drill to the accompaniment of
the band in which Ginger played the clarinet - three hundred little sailors 
dancing the hornpipe barefoot on the sandy grass. Then came the captain's inspection of tents, and scrubbing of tables, and 
polishing of guns and carbines; and
at twelve o'clock the whole camp marched down to the sea for bathing.
That afternoon I found Ginger with " Puggy" Lever and Charley Stokes playing by the old breakwater.
"Come and play, sir, won't you? " cried Ginger as I approached.
" It's crabs - come and play crabs, sir! " shouted Puggy.
" What's crabs? " I asked.
"Crabs is a fine game," said Charley pointing to a large circle in the sand 
with a sort of bull's-eye marked in the
middle. " You put your crab in the middle and tickle him with the stick; 
and the one that goes to the outside first wins
a cigarette picture. "
" Come on, then," I said, and the game waxed furious.
" My crab's no good," said Ginger presently.
He's tired, I'll go and get another."
A minute later, a crab descended out of the sky from the other side of 
the breakwater, and landed with a whack on
the sand, while Ginger came scrambling back. But the crab did not move.
" He's dead! " cried Ginger in surprise, picking up the body of the 
unfortunate crustacean.
" Of course, he's dead, you old stupid," I said. "What else did you expect? "
"He did come an awful wallop," said Ginger pensively; and then presently, 
" I wonder why crabs don't get drowned!"
I was just thinking of a simple reply when Puggy undertook the 
explanation. " Go on! " he said. " That's easy. They
hold their breath! "
"Or perhaps," suggested Charley, " it's those marks on their backs that 
keep them from being drowned. My dad had
two snakes tattooed on his arm to keep him from being drowned."
" Go on! " said Puggy. " My father had a text on his back and two herald 
angels singing on his chest, and he was
drowned! "
This was rather a stumper.
" Well, anyway," said Charley, " Ginger wears something round his neck 
that keeps him from being drowned. Don't
you, Ginger? "
Ginger put a hand to his jumper with the quick action that I had seen 
once before, and his face flushed.
" And has it kept you from drowning, Ginger?" I laughed.
" I don't know," he said. " Perhaps it did - once."
" And when was that?
" Under the bridge," said Ginger - and I started.
" Oh, come on! " said Puggy impatiently, and in a moment the game of 
crabs was in full swing again.
 (To be continued.)

THE BULLS-EYE BRIGADE.
Henry Bargery had been reading a boy's journal, a "blood," as he called it. 
It was full of plots and adventures and
rescues. He read aloud one of the passages to David. It began where one of 
the plotters says, " But hist! we are
observed." The others exclaim, " Then we must conceal ourselves."
These remarks stuck in the boys' minds; and often, when Henry was saying 
something to David in the garden, he
would break off suddenly and exclaim, " But hist! we are observed." David 
would duly reply, " Then we must conceal
ourselves." And they would crouch among the bushes or behind the shed, and 
continue their talk in whispers.
One day Henry said, " We could play this game much better if we had 
lanterns." David agreed. The very next day
they saw some cheap Chinese lanterns in a shop window, and they bought one 
each. That evening, just as it was
growing dark, the two boys could be seen with lanterns in their hands, 
walking stealthily through the garden. They
crept round the apple tree, then behind the shed, then in and out of the 
laurel bushes. They seemed to be watching
for somebody, and at the same time trying to escape notice. Suddenly Henry 
exclaimed. " But hist! we are
observed."
He was right. They were observed. They were observed by Phyllis and Jane, 
who were watching them from the sitting-room window. Moreover, they were observed by the man next door, who was out in his 
garden and had peered over the fence to see what the boys were doing. David was not slow to respond to the cry of alarm. 
Muttering, " Then we must conceal ourselves," he tried to hide his lantern under his coat. In 
his hurry he tilted it, and it caught fire. Henry ran to the rescue. The rush of air blew the flame of 
his candle against the paper side, and in a few
seconds his own lantern had met the same fate as David's. It thus 
happened that the first night's adventure came
suddenly and sadly to an end.
In the bedroom that night Henry held forth on the subject of lanterns. He 
found in David a patient and, indeed, an
eager listener. Henry's remarks all tended to show how worthless were 
Chinese lanterns and how excellent were
bull's-eyes.
" A bull's-eye," he explained, " is the sort that policemen use and 
detectives, as well as robbers and pirates. It has a
little door that slides over the glass and shuts off the light when darkness
is needed. We must save up, David, and buy some."
They did. They saved up, they bought bull's-eye
lanterns, and they practised with them in the garden. That was the 
beginning of Henry's Bull's-eye Brigade; for this
little company of two soon became a secret society of six. Jane was the first to come in. Then Jack Willett joined, and Jane's 
friend, Elizabeth 
Jarvis. Even Phyllis condescended to become a
member. When she saw the others flitting about in the garden, dodging in 
and out among the greenery, peeping from behind the shed, flashing out lights, and then suddenly hiding them, she felt a strong 
wish to join in the sport. Even
the smell of the lanterns had an attraction about it. She therefore asked 
to be allowed to join the club or whatever they
called it. Then it was that Henry thought it well to christen it, and he 
said that henceforth it should be called the Bull's-eye Brigade.
Henry was not quite satisfied with the doings of the Bull's-eye Brigade. 
They were too public. Everybody knew about
the brigade. There was not enough secrecy about it, and not enough mystery. 
Henry therefore started to reform
things.
He began by persuading members to speak to one another by telephone. The 
telephone consisted of two small
drums joined together by a long piece of string. Each drum could be used 
either as a speaking-tube or as a receiver; and the string served as a telephone wire. The children could converse by means of this 
telephone across the whole
length of the garden. So a great deal of buzzing was heard there for the 
next few evenings, and many strange
whisperings. The mystery was beginning to deepen.
Henry's next concern was to find a secret meeting place. David suggested 
the cellar under their father's shop. Henry
jumped at the idea. " The very place," he said. So it was, for they wanted 
a place that had all the darkness and the
dampness of a cave. The only light came from a small, barred, dusty window 
which lit only a small corner of the
cellar, and that but dimly. The walls were
stained with damp, and here and there they dripped with moisture. On the floor lay a few old boxes and barrels, and otherwise the 
place was empty. It was, in fact, as desolate and 
neglected a spot as could anywhere be found.
Henry and David decided that it was just right. The girls were not so sure. 
When they saw beetles and spiders
crawling about, they felt inclined to scream and to run back up the steps; 
but Henry taunted them with not being
sports, so reluctantly they stayed.
At the first meeting in the cellar Henry acquitted himself with credit. He 
lit bits of candle and stuck them here and
there about the room. Then he sat upon a barrel and told the brigade that 
they ought to have a secret code. He
pointed out that if any of their notes or letters fell into the hands of 
the enemy - the enemy being all those who did not
belong to the Bull's-eye Brigade - everything would be discovered. They must 
write a secret hand; they must have a
code. What code should they use? Had anyone a suggestion? Nobody had; so 
Henry made one himself. He proposed that each word should be written  backwards. Then a message would appear like this
ew teem thgin-ot rednu eht elppa eert ta xis kcolc'o
Phyllis looked at the example and said, " Pooh! Anybody with brains could 
read that straight off."
" Then read this one," said Henry, and he took another piece of paper from 
his pocket and handed it to Phyllis. This is
what was on it
Ublf dbsf! Uif pme nbo ibt bo jolmjoh.
After a moment's scrutiny, Phyllis said, " This isn't written in the same 
code."
" I didn't say it was," said Henry. "See if you can make it out. "
Phyllis puzzled over it for some time and at last she gave it up. The 
others had a try at it; but they too had to give it up. Then Henry said, " It's really quite simple. I moved every letter forward one 
step in the alphabet. Instead of a I wrote b, instead of b I wrote c, instead of c I wrote d, and so on. To read it, all you have to do 
is to move each letter one step back. The message then reads
Take care! The old man has an inkling."
"So he has," said David. For at that moment Mr. Bargery opened the cellar 
door and shouted: " Now then, you
children, what are you doing down there in the cellar? "
-From " The Bargerys," by P. B. BALLARD. (University of London Press.)

GINGER. (Continued from page 144.)
We were twenty miles out to sea. All the afternoon, the Talbot training 
ketch had spanked along in capital style.
There had been much to see and much to do, plenty of work and plenty of 
food - for those that had an appetite! (For out
of the " crew " of forty, only the cook-boy and Ginger and three others had 
ever been to sea before.) Now it was night.
I woke about one o'clock and was at once aware that we were " lolloping." 
There were creakings and crackings and
jinglings of glass, while every quarter of a minute the old boom fell with 
a crash and a shudder. I rolled out of my bunk,
put on a sweater and sea-boots and things, and climbed the companion to the 
deck. The night was hot and very still.
The ship lay broadside on to the swell, and she rolled heavily as she 
climbed the flank of each sleek wave that heaved
under her, and then slid down the other side.
Hanging on by the stays I had begun to make my way forrad when I stumbled 
on a little dark form. I struck a
match. " Hallo, Charley," I said. " Not feeling well? "
"Awful bad," said poor Charley. " I shan't never be a sailor - I'll be a 
greengrocer."
"Buck up, old son," I said. "You'll be better as soon as the wind gets up. 
Come into the bows and I'll spin up."
We made our way forrad, clinging on to ropes and the cabin tops, and 
stepping over the rest of the starboard watch,
who lay hunched against everything that wouldn't slide. Two boys kept 
watch up in the bows. They sat one on each
side of the bowsprit under the flapping foresail.
"Well, Ginger," I said, as I struck another match, " enjoying yourself?"
"It's fine! " cried Ginger with enthusiasm, and in the match-light I saw he 
meant it.
"And what about you, Puggy? " I asked.
" I've been sick three times," said Puggy, with intense indignation. " And 
now I'm going to be again." And he was.
" Spin up, sir - do spin up! " said Ginger.
" Right you are," I said; and settling myself against the bowsprit, I span 
up, which means that for two hours I told old
pirate yarns, while the boys listened with enthusiasm. Twice Ginger had to 
interrupt me with a shout of " Red light on
the port bow, sir! " and he was answered by a grunt from the skipper away 
aft. And then slowly a lemon-coloured
sheen appeared on the eastern horizon., the sails lifted and jolly gurgling 
noises began to happen under the bows,
and we were sailing. Then in the east, a long cloud, thin as a scimitar, 
began to glow like molten gold.
" Look, sir," said Ginger pointing at it. " One day," he went on dreamily, 
"I'll sail a boat all of my own. I'll sail all night
like this - all alone - nobody but me and the sea!"
He had his wish - sooner then he thought and in stranger manner.
Glimpse number three - and the curtain rings up on War. I had a commission in 
the R.N.V.R. and had been knocking about anywhere between Cork and the Bristol Channel. Twice I had heard from Ginger in 
as many years. Once when he left the school to join the merchant service (his ambition was always to have a command of his 
own some day so he would not join the Royal Navy) ; and more recently I had had a letter from him addressed from S.S. Candia, 
Palermo. He appeared to be enjoying life thoroughly and delighted in all he saw, but, as was characteristic of him, his 
descriptions were all sea sights, and not of the ports at which he touched. He told me how they had twice " been chased by 
submarines. But the skipper, he's
a good 'un and we dodged and dodged and 'got clean away. I was away 
aft - shouting the direction because the
skipper says I have sharp eyes. It was fine, sir! " I smiled to myself as 
I read this for I could picture Ginger's
enthusiasm.
And then suddenly we met.
It was a raw gusty morning in May, about seven o'clock. The wind was dead 
in our faces as we thrashed along
somewhere south of the Tuskar rock. My junior had the glasses, and it was 
he who first spotted the boat.
" There's an open boat on the starboard bow," he said suddenly. "Submarines again, I expect."
I took the glasses, blinked the salt from my eyelashes, and followed his 
pointing finger. Then suddenly I saw it - a
white open boat with one little mast and a lug sail, and a solitary figure at the tiller. I altered course quickly and bore
down on her. She was running before the wind, but I think the figure saw 
us too, and made in our direction. We
approached each other, and as her bows dipped, I made out other forms 
lying sack-like across the thwarts.
" I think I can read the name," said my Sub. "S.S. C-A-N - Candia! "
I started, seized the glasses from him, and peered
at the boat that leapt and thrashed towards us, now hardly a quarter of a 
mile away. Then I put the megaphone to my lips, and shouted " Ginger! " as loud as I could shout. My Sub. turned to me in 
amazement, but I had no eyes for him. I was staring at the little figure in the stern sheets - his shock of copper hair, and his 
pinched
white face. 
" Ginger! " I shouted again. " Carry on! We're coming! "
The boy threw up his head suddenly, stared in my direction, and then 
smiled. But he made no answer. I could see
now that his right arm rested on the tiller, and the lugsail sheet, after 
passing round a cleet, was tied to his left. As I
reversed engines, the boy put the helm over, ran up into the wind, and came 
alongside with perfect precision. Then he
sat staring with wide-open eyes at the flapping sail, but he didn't move. 
Two of my men had to jump aboard and lift
him on to the deck. There were three others in the boat; but they were 
stone dead, and over one of them Ginger had
placed his coat.
I gave my junior to understand that he was in charge of the ship, and then 
hurried to the cabin whither the lad had
already been carried. But it was clear from the first that there was little 
chance of saying his life. For a long time he
could not speak at all, but he watched me with friendly, curious eyes.
"Don't try to talk, Ginger," I said as I heated fresh blankets. " Just 
listen and I'll tell you why I am here in uniform. I can see you're asking me." So I told him as I worked, and slowly a little life 
began to return to the boy's frozen limbs.
"I'm glad you're here, sir," he said at last.
" But I wish I could have picked you up many hours earlier, old son," I said. " How long were you out, Ginger, in the open boat, I 
mean? "
"Two nights out," said the boy. I looked at him in pitiful amazement. 
There was nothing to be said. The tragedy
seemed too big for comment. Presently he began to talk more freely. What 
he said was broken and disjointed, of
course, for he was obviously dying; but I learnt from him that the Candia 
had been torpedoed absolutely without
warning. She had been struck right in the bows, and settled so quickly 
that there was no time to do more than launch
one boat. He himself and two others were in the stern when she was 
struck, and it was they who got the boat clear,
and picked up the skipper ten minutes after the Candia sank.
All that night and the following day they had carried on north-westerly, 
hoping to be seen by a passing vessel, or,
failing that, to make a port in the south of Ireland. But no vessel came 
within hail, and they made no land-fall. They
had no food of any sort, and their bodies were almost frozen.
Before midnight on the second night out, the "other men " had all died. 
The skipper was the last to go.
"He was a good man, and I tried to save him," said Ginger  " but he 
couldn't stick it. Then I was quite alone. It blew
hard; and it was cold. I didn't know it could be so cold!"
Told as bluntly as I tell it now, the tragedy seems cruel enough. But I 
had seen the open boat, and here was Ginger
dying before my eyes; so that I felt to the full the reality of that 
horror - the boat, the darkness, and the dangerous
sea; the three dead men - and the lad, alive but half-frozen, sitting alone 
in the stern sheets.
Not so the boy! Suddenly he looked up with something of his old 
enthusiasm and said, " But you know, sir, it was fine, that last night! There was nobody left but me, and the boat - I had to edge 
her into the seas
all night - and the noise of the wind. It made me think of a tune I used to 
hear a long time ago, before I can properly
remember. And when it began to get light, I didn't feel the cold - not so 
much. I wasn't afraid of the dead men. I just
meant to win through. I meant to. And then I was going to write and tell 
you about it, sir; but I'm glad you're here, sir; it was fine! "
Even as he spoke I saw how mistaken I had been and how blind; for what I 
had shuddered to regard as Tragedy
unrelieved, Ginger, by sheer courage, had transformed to sublime Adventure. 
It was fine - a great deal finer than the boy himself could possibly know.
But we could not save him - he died that afternoon just as we put into 
Wexford. He went out quite happily, nothing
harrowing and nothing sentimental about it. And the last thing he did was 
to give me the " thing he wore round his
neck to keep him from being drowned " as Charley had said. It was his "real 
mother" he told me. I have it here. Just a silver locket, tightly fitting; and inside is a miniature portrait of a 
lady, very wistful and gracious, with hair of a deep
coppery-gold.
I have no wish to follow up the clue. What right have I to be curious? But 
whether Ginger knew more than I did - and I never had a chance of asking him - that, indeed, I should like to know.
But now I never shall.
-Guy N. POCOCK. (Published in "Junior Short Stories " in Dents' "The Kings 
Treasuries.") (Adapted.)

THE HUT IN THE GORSE-BUSHES.
[Our story is an extract from "Jim Davis," a tale of the early nineteenth 
century, about a band of smugglers. A twelve-year-old boy, called Jim
Davis, had to take a lonely ride late one snowy night. He ran into a band 
of night-riders, or smugglers, who eventually let him go unharmed.
The next morning he was out playing with his friend, Hugh, when a strange 
man came after them. Jim now goes on with the story.]
The man was on us with three strides, with his hand on our collars, 
frightening us out of any power to struggle. " You young fools," he said,
not unkindly. "Why couldn't you stop when I waved to you?" He then hurried us 
at a smart run down the road. "Don't you stir a muscle," he
added as he ran. "I'm not going to eat you, unless you drive me to it."
At the lower end of the road, nearly half a mile from our home, the scrub 
was very thick. It seemed to be a tangle of briers, too thick for
hounds, too thick almost for rabbits. Hugh and I had never been in that 
part of the world before, but our guide evidently knew it well. He
hurried us on, panting as we were, till we came to a part
where our way seemed stopped by gorse-bushes. They rose up, thick and dark, right in front of us.  I 
Our guide
stopped and told us to look down. Among the gnarled gorse-stems there seemed to be a passage or "run" 
made by
some beast, fox or badger, going to and from his lair.
"Down you go," said our guide. "There's lots of room when you try. Imagine you're a  rabbit."
We saw that it was useless to refuse, and, besides, by this time we had lost most of our terror. I dropped 
on to my knees
at once, and began to squirm through the passage. Hugh followed me, and the strange man followed 
after Hugh. It
was not really difficult, except just at the beginning, where the stems were close together. When I 
had wriggled for a
couple of yards, the bushes seemed to open out on either side. It was prickly work, but I'm sure we both felt 
the romance of it,
forgetting our fear before we reached the heart of the clump.
Here the gorse-bushes had been cut away, and piled up in a sort of wall about a small central square 
some five or six
yards across. In the middle of the square someone had dug a shallow hollow, and paved it with shingle 
from the
beach. It had then been neatly wattled over into a kind of trim hut. The wattling was made fairly 
waterproof by masses
of gorse and bracken driven in among the boughs. It was one of the most perfect hiding- places you 
could imagine. It
could not be seen from   any point save from high up in one of the trees surrounding the thicket. A 
regiment might have
beaten the wood pretty thoroughly and yet have failed to find the hut. The gorse was so thick in all 
the outer part of
the clump that dogs would leave its depths unsearched. Yet, lying there in
shelter, one could hear the splashing babble of the brook only fifty yards away, and the singing of a 
girl at the mill
only a little further up the stream.
The man told us to get inside the shelter, which we did. Inside it was rather dark, but the man lit a 
lantern that hung
from  the roof and kindled a fire in a little fireplace. This fireplace was covered with turf so that 
the smoke should not
rise up in a column. We saw that the floor of the hut was heaped with bracken, and there were 
tarpaulin boat-rugs
piled in one corner as though for bedding.
The man picked up a couple of rugs and told us to wrap ourselves in them. "You'll be cold if you 
don't wrap up," he
said.
He was a well-made, active-looking man, with great arms and shoulders. He was evidently a sailor: one 
could tell that
by the way of his walk, by the way in which his arms swung, by the way in which his head was set upon 
his body.
What made him remarkable was the peculiar dancing brightness of his eyes; they gave his face at odd 
moments the
look of a fiend; then that look would go, and he would look like a mischievous, merry boy; but more 
usually he would
look fierce and resolute.
Chewing a piece of plug tobacco he lay back in a corner, and seemed to pass into a sort of day-dream. 
Presently he
looked at us and asked us if we knew why we were there. We said that we did not.
" Well," he said, " it's like this. Late last night you " (here he gave me a nudge with his foot) " 
you, young gentleman
that looks so smart, went for a ride in the snow and all. There were others out for a ride last 
night, quite a lot of them,
others that the law would be glad to know of, with men so scarce for the King's navy. Well, to-day the
beaks are out trying to find those other ones. A power of red-coats have come here, and there they 
go, clackity clank, all swords and horses, asking every house."
"What do they ask? " said Hugh.
"They ask a lot of things," said the man. " 'Where were you last night?' That's one question. 'What 
time did you come in, last night?' That's another. 'Let's have a look at your horse; he looks as
though he'd been out in the snow last
night! ' Lots of things they ask, and if they got hold of you, young master, why you might have 
noticed things last night, and perhaps they might pump what you noticed out of you. So it was
thought you had better be out of the road when they came."
He was silent for a minute or two, while Hugh and I looked at each other.
" Oh, I'm not going to keep you long," said the man. "Those red-coats will have done asking questions 
about here before your dinner time. Then they'll ride on, and a good riddance. Till they're
gone, why, here you'll stay. So let's be company. What's your name, young master?" he gave Hugh a dig in the ribs with his boot.
" Hugh," he answered.
" Hugh, " said the man. " Hugh! You won't  come to much, you won't. What's your name? He nudged me in 
the same way.
"Jim," I said.
" Ah! Jim, Jim," he replied. "I've known many Jims. Some were good in their way, too. This is the 
first time Jim and I ever met. We shall be great friends, we shall. I shouldn't  wonder if I didn't
make a man of you, one time or another." He brightened up as though something had pleased him. He looked very nice when he 
looked pleased, in spite of his eyes and the gipsy darkness of his skin. " Here," he said, " let's 
be company. Do you know any knots, you two? "
No; neither of us knew any knots except the ordinary overhead and granny knots.
"Well, I'll show you," he said. " It'll come in useful some day. Always learn what you can, that's 
what I say, because it'll come in useful."
He searched in his pockets till he found a small hank of spun-yarn, from which he cut a piece about a yard long.
 
GRANNY KNOT AND REEF KNOT.

" See here," he said. " Now I'll teach you. It's quite easy if you only pay attention. 
Now, how would you tie a knot if you were doing up a parcel? "
We both tried, and both made granny knots, with the ends sticking out at right angles to the rest of 
the yarn.
Wrong," he said. "Those are grannies. They would jam, so that, you'd never untie them, besides being ugly. There are wrong 
ways even in doing up a string. See here." He rapidly twisted the ends 
together into a reef-knot. "There's strength and beauty, together," he said. "Look how neat it is,
the ends tidy along the standing part, all as neat as pie. Besides, it'd never jam. Watch how I do it, 
and then try it for yourself."
Very soon we had both mastered the reef-knot, and had tried our hand at others-the bowline, the figure 
of eight, the carrick bend, and the old swab-hitch. He was very patient with us. He told us
exactly how each knot would be used at sea, and when and why. The time passed pleasantly and quickly; we 
felt like jolly robbers in a cave. It was like being the hero of a story-book to sit there with
that rough man, waiting till the troops had gone. It was not very cold with the fire and the boat-rugs.
We were heartily sorry when the man rose to his feet with the remark that he must see if the  coast were 
clear. Before he left the hut he glared down at us. " Look here," he said, " don't you try  to go till I
give the word. But there, we're friends; no need to speak rough to friends! I'll be back in minute."
The strange man passed out of the hut and 
along the rabbit-run to the edge of the gorse. We heard his feet crunch upon the snow beyond, rustling the leaves under it. Then 
we heard a  pheasant calling, and another pheasant answered
him. It occurred to both of us that the pheasants were the night-riders making their private signals.
After a time Hugh said, "Hush! There's   Mother calling."
Outside the gorse-clump at some little distance from us we heard Hugh's mother and my aunt calling "Hugh! " and " Jim! " 
repeatedly. We lay 
very still wondering what they would think, and hoping that they would make no search for us. Their 
voices came nearer and nearer, till they were at the edge of the clump, but on the side opposite
to that in which the rabbit-run opened. We could hear every word of their conversation.
" It's very curious," said my aunt. "Wherever
can they have got to? How provoking boys are!"
" It doesn't really matter," said Hugh's mother; "the officer has gone, and the boy would only have 
been scared by all his foolish questions. He might have frightened the boy out of his wits. I wonder
where the young monkeys have got to! They were going to build snow-huts. Perhaps they are hiding in 
one now."
We were, had she only known it. Hugh and I grinned at each other. Suddenly my aunt said, " I'm almost 
sure I smell something burning.
" Yes," said Hugh's mother. " It seems to come from that gorse there."
" Funny," said my aunt. " I suppose someone has lighted a fire up in the wood, and the smoke is 
blowing down on us. Well, we'll go in to dinner; it's no good staying here catching our death,
looking for two mad things."
The two ladies walked away. A few minutes later a pheasant called softly a few yards from us, then 
the gorse-stems shook, and our friend appeared at the hut door.
" They're gone all right," he said. " Swords and red coats and pipeclay - they're gone. And a good riddance, too! I should have 
been back before, only your ladies were looking for you, and I had to wait till they were gone. I expect you'll want 
your dinner. Well, cut and get it."
He slung the boat-rugs into a corner, blew out the lantern, and dropped a handful of snow on the fire. 
" Cut," he continued. "You can go. Get out of this. Run and get your dinners." We
went with him out of the hut into the square. "See, here," he said, "don't you go coming here. You 
don't know of this place-see? This is a private house-trespassers will be
prosecuted. Now run along, and thank you for your company."
-Adapted extract from "Jim Davis," by JOHN MASEFIELD, in The Heritage of Literature Series. (Longmans, Green, and Co.)

A TALL TALE.
The King of Tarradiddledovia was strolling ever so majestically through the Palace, with his hands clasped behind his back and 
his nose in the air, thinking how exceedingly elaborate it felt to be a King, when his eye fell on the Prime Minister, who was 
curled up in an armchair busily reading a book.
" Now, now, now, tut tut, and everything," said the King sharply. " What's all this indeed? 
Neglecting State duties and reading books instead. That isn't a very prime way to be a Minister, is 
it?" He
took the book away from the Prime Minister to see what it was about, while the Minister uncurled 
himself from the chair and stood up, wondering if he was going to have his head ordered off.
His Majesty peered at the book, took out his spectacles and peered again through them; but he had 
brought the wrong pair of spectacles, so the printing looked rather squiggly and wavy. He had,
besides, taken the book from the Prime Minister by the top of it, so that he was really looking at it 
upside down. No wonder the printing looked funny!
" Dear, dear," said the King. " Most interesting. I had no idea you studied foreign languages. I'm 
sorry I spoke so sharply to you. Pray accept a small present." He dropped a bag of gold into the
Prime Minister's hand, and strolled royally on.
The Prime Minister looked from the bag of gold to the book, and from the book to the bag of gold. "Goodness me! " he 
whispered. " That's wonderful. Now, what can have made His
Majesty think this was a foreign sort of book? " He put the book on the chair, picked it up and 
looked at it.
" Ha, ha! " he laughed. "I see. I absolutely do. Ha, ha, ha! How ever so funny! His Majesty had the 
book upside down when he took it from me and, being short-sighted and
everything, he thought it was a foreign language. Oh, ha, ha! " He ran off gurgling to tell the Lord 
Chancellor about it.
" Well I never! " said the Lord Chancellor, who knew how drastically severe the King always was
about reading during State hours. " Fancy that now! Looked at the book upside
down and gave you a bag of gold because he thought you were studying foreign languages." The 
Chancellor's eyes began to glint. He had an idea, but he didn't say anything. He
thought it was a wonderful idea.
The next day His Majesty was strolling through the Palace just as majestically as before, when he 
came upon another figure curled up in the same chair. This figure was also deep
in a book. It was the Lord Chancellor, and he thought he was being excessively crafty, because he was 
holding his book upside down, all ready for the King to look at it.
" Well, well," said His Majesty, taking the book from the Chancellor, but not feeling very cross, 
because he remembered the what-he-thought-was-foreign language that the Prime
Minister had been studying. " What's all this about, may I ask? Studying, I suppose? Yes, yes, most excellent. I
really-What's the meaning of this? " He slammed the book shut and glared at the Lord Chancellor, who 
shot out of the chair and stood shivering and quaking, and wondering what
was wrong with his idea. " How dare you? " roared the King, shaking the book at the Lord Chancellor.
It was a book of adventure tales. Yes, and the silly Chancellor had been holding it upside down so 
that the King would think it a foreign
language. But, of course, when the King took it by the top, he saw it the right way up and the 
Chancellor's sort of an idea came all to bits.
"I-I-I-" began the Chancellor.
"Guards! " called the King and, pointing to the Chancellor, cried, " To the dungeons with him! " Then 
off the King went with the adventure book under his arm and he read seven of the
stories straight off.
After dinner the Prime Minister came nervously into the King's room and stood shifting one foot over the 
other, and sucking his thumb, and fidgeting with his ears.
"Er-er-er, pardon, Majesty," he stammered. "But I, that is to say, it was my fault, or rather-"
"Now, what are you talking about?" said the King, putting down the book in the middle of probably the 
most exciting tale of all. " If you want a half-holiday, you'll have to wait till the Queen comes back,
but if it's only an extra sixpence pocket money you've come about, you can tell the cook to give it 
to you out of the money I left for the baker."
" N-n-n-o, Majesty," stuttered the Prime Minister, treading on himself extra hard, and nearly pulling 
one ear off. " I-er-it's about the Chancellor. Please, it was my fault about the book, that to say, I-"  He managed to tell the King 
about the upside-down book, and the not-a-bit-foreign language that 
he wasn't studying at all. As he explained, the King grew angrier and angrier, and redder and
redder. Then he gradually grew less and less red, and less and less angry for he began to see that it was 
slightly funny in parts, and anyway he was enjoying the book of adventure stories.
"Well," he said, thinking a little and pulling his own ear because he'd seen the Prime Minister do it so much. 
" Well, go and fetch the Chancellor."
"Now, listen to me," said the King when both the Prime Minister and the Chancellor stood before him. "Don't let there be any 
more of this reading business." He gave another small bag of gold to
the Chancellor just to be fair, and to make up for his having been in the dungeon, and he was about 
to send them off when in came the Queen back from a short holiday.
" So this is how you do the ruling when I'm away, is it? " she asked. " Give me that book this 
minute," and taking the book of stories away from the King she sent him and the two Ministers out of
the room.
The Queen had her breakfast in bed next morning, because she said she was tired after her journey. 
But, as the book of adventure stories was hidden under her pillow, one can think what one
likes about whether she had sat up late reading it, or was going to have a wonderful time reading it 
in bed over breakfast.
- NORMAN HUNTER,  in Blackies  "The Big Bumper Budget for Children." (Slightly, adapted.)
 
SPRING MORNING.
The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home: first with brooms, then with dusters; then 
on ladders and steps and chairs, with a brash and a pail of whitewash; till he had dust in his throat and eyes, and splashes of 
whitewash all over his black fur, and an aching back and weary arms. Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below 
and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house, with its spirit of divine discontent and longing.
It was small wonder then that he suddenly flung down his brush on the floor, said "Bother!" and " Oh blow! " and also "Hang 
spring-cleaning!" and bolted out of the house.
Something up above was calling him imperiously, and he made for the steep 
little tunnel which answered in his case
to the gravelled carriage-drive owned by animals whose residences are 
nearer to the sun and air. He scraped and
scratched and scrabbled and scrooged, and then he scrooged again
and scrabbled and scratched and scraped, working busily with his little 
paws and muttering to himself, "Up we go! Up
we go!" till at last, pop! his snout came out into the sunlight, and he 
found himself rolling in the warm grass of a great
meadow.
"This is fine!" he said to himself. "This is better than whitewashing! " 
The sunshine struck hot on his fur, soft breezes
caressed his heated brow, and, after the seclusion of the cellarage he had 
lived in so long, the carol of happy birds fell
on his dulled hearing almost like a shout. Jumping
off all his four legs at once, in the joy of living and the delight of 
spring without its cleaning, he pursued his way across
the meadow till he reached the hedge on the farther side.
It all seemed too good to be true. Hither and
thither he rambled busily, along the hedgerows, across the copses, finding 
everywhere birds building, flowers budding,
leaves thrusting - everything happy and progressive and occupied. And instead 
of having an uneasy conscience
pricking him and whispering "Whitewash," he could only feel how jolly it 
was to be the only idle dog among all these
busy citizens. After all, the best part of a holiday is perhaps not so much 
to be resting, yourself, as to see all the
other fellows busy working.
He thought his happiness was complete when, as he meandered aimlessly 
along, suddenly he stood by the edge of a
full-fed river. Never before in his life had he seen a river - this sleek, 
sinuous, full-bodied animal, chasing and chuckling, gripping things with a gurgle and leaving them with a laugh, to fling itself on 
fresh playmates that shook themselves free, and
were caught and held again. All was a-shake and a-shiver - glints and 
gleams and sparkles, rustle and swirl, chatter
and bubble.
The Mole was bewitched, entranced, fascinated. By the side of the river he 
trotted as one trots, when very small, by the side of a
man who holds one spellbound by exciting stories; and when tired at last he 
sat on the bank, while the river still chattered on to
him a babbling procession of the best stories in the world, sent from the 
heart of the earth to be told at last to the insatiable sea.
As he sat on the grass and looked across the river, a dark hole in the bank 
opposite, just above the water's edge, caught his eye,
and dreamily he fell to considering what a nice snug dwelling-place it 
would make for an animal with few wants and fond of a bijou
riverside residence, above flood level and remote from noise and dust. As 
he gazed, something bright and small seemed to twinkle
down in the heart of it, vanished, then twinkled once more like a tiny 
star. But it could hardly be a star in such an unlikely
situation; and it was too glittering and small for a glow-worm. Then as he 
looked it winked at him, and so declared itself to be an
eye; and a small face began gradually to grow up round it, like a frame 
round a picture.
A brown little face with whiskers. A grave round face with the same twinkle 
in its eye as had first attracted his notice. Small neat
ears and thick silky hair. It was the Water Rat!
Then the two animals stood and regarded each other cautiously.
"Hallo, Mole," said the Water Rat.
"Hallo, Rat! " said the Mole.
"Would you like to come over? " inquired the Rat presently.
"Oh, it's all very well to talk," said the Mole rather pettishly, he being 
new to a river and riverside life and its ways.
The Rat said nothing, but stooped and unfastened a rope and hauled on it; then lightly stepped into a little boat which the Mole 
had not observed. It was painted blue outside and white within and was just the size for two animals; and the Mole's whole heart 
went out to it at once, even though he did not yet fully understand its uses.
The Rat sculled smartly across and made fast. Then he held up his forepaw, 
as the Mole stepped gingerly down. "Lean on that! " he said. " Now then, step lively! " and the Mole to his surprise and rapture 
found himself actually seated in the stern of a real boat.
"This has been a wonderful day!" said he, as the Rat shoved off and took to 
the sculls again. "Do you know I've never
been in a boat before in all my life."
" What? " cried the Rat, open-mouthed - " Never been in a - you never- well I - 
what have you been doing, then? "
"Is it so nice as all that ? " asked the Mole shyly, though he was quite 
prepared to believe it as he leant back in his seat and surveyed the cushions, the oars, the rowlocks, and all the fascinating 
fittings, and felt the boat sway lightly under him.
"Nice? It's the only thing," said the Water Rat solemnly, as he leant 
forward for his stroke. " Believe me, my young
friend, there is nothing, absolutely nothing, half so much worth doing as 
simply messing about in boats. Simply
messing," he went on dreamily: "messing-about-in-boats, messing-"
"Look ahead, Rat!" cried the Mole suddenly.
It was too late. The boat struck the bank full tilt. The dreamer, the 
joyous oarsman, lay on his back at the bottom of
the boat, his heels in the air.
"-about in boats - or with boats," the Rat went on composedly, picking 
himself up with a pleasant laugh. "In or out of
them, it doesn't matter. Nothing really seems to matter; that's the charm 
of it. Whether you get away or whether you
don't; whether you arrive at your destination or whether you reach 
somewhere else, or whether you never get
anywhere at all, you're always busy and you never do anything in 
particular; and when you've done it there's always
something else to do, and you can do it if you like, but you'd much 
better not. Look here! If you've really nothing else
on hand this morning, suppose we drop down the river together and have a 
long day of it? "
The Mole waggled his toes from sheer happiness, spread his chest with a sigh of full contentment, and leaned back blissfully into 
the soft cushions. "What a day I'm having!" he said. "Let us start at once!"
-From the "Wind in the Willows," by KENNETH  GRAHAME. (Methuen's Modern 
Classics.)

CAMP BOOK-KEEPING.
At Easter I camped with a troop of boy scouts from East London. It was a 
rash act, involving much soreness of body
from lying on the hard ground, and playing football on a pitch consisting 
largely of rabbit-holes and blackberry bushes.
My side lost 14-3, and it seemed to me that my colleagues treated me rather 
less respectfully after the defeat. I
wished that I had not told them that I once played for the Old Winburians, 
because they would never understand that
playing in a pitted jungle is difficult to a man used to a flat field.
I was glad, therefore, when the scoutmaster asked me to draw up a 
balance-sheet of the camp expenses. I am a
chartered accountant, and drawing up a balance-sheet is one of the things I 
do rather well. Perhaps, I thought, it
would help me to regain the lost respect of the boys if I drew up a really 
elegant balance-sheet.
" To start with," I said to the scoutmaster, " how many boys are there, and 
how much did each of them pay?"
"There are twenty of them," he said, "and what may be called the basic 
charge is three-and-ninepence a head but, of
course, nobody actually pays three-and-ninepence, because that includes 
railway fare, and some of them came down
by bicycle, and others missed meals and have to be allowed so much off. 
Then again, it depends on whether they
have one or two eggs for breakfast. You will find it best to have each boy 
in separately and assess how much he
owes and get the money from him while you can."
George Smith was the first boy to come in.
" Three-and-ninepence, please," I said, "less any deductions."
"I came down by bicycle," said George, " which means I don't pay the 
ninepence train-fare, so that makes it three
shillings. Then Skipper owed me fourpence from last camp; and I wasn't 
in to Sunday dinner, so that's another
fivepence."
"Do you have one egg for breakfast or two eggs?" I asked, trying to keep 
my head from splitting.
" Two eggs," said George, " but I brought a dozen eggs down with me and 
gave them to Skipper, although actually
three of them ought to be allowed off Bob Fall's bill, because he lent me 
two eggs last camp, and there was another
of his I sat on, which Skipper said I ought to pay for."
The scoutmaster interrupted.
" One of the dozen you gave me was bad," he said. "You can't expect it to 
be deducted from your bill if it was no good."
"Was that the one Ted Fisher had? " asked George.
"Yes."
"Well, it wasn't really bad, but Ted Fisher has a suspicious nature about 
eggs. When he said it was bad, I bought it
from him and sold it to Stanley Earl, but Stanley only had a halfpenny, 
so he said the other penny-farthing could be
adjusted in the bill. "
George departed, and I said to the scoutmaster that perhaps it would be 
more businesslike to make a list of
expenses before we bothered about the receipts. I thought the expenses 
might be a little more straightforward.
" The train-fares were ten-and-sixpence," he said, "but one ticket was wasted because Steve didn't turn up. You'll have to 
allow for that, and we may get it back from the
railway company. The grocer's bill was seven-and-eleven, but his son is 
at the camp, so he allows us twenty per cent.
off, except on the sausages. The green vegetables and potatoes we get from the 
farmer, and they came to about seven shillings, but
Stanley Earl mended his gate for him, and he said we could deduct a 
shilling from the bill - though of course that ought to come off
what Stanley owes; and then-"
Luckily a boy poked his head in and asked if I would like another game of 
football. On the whole I felt it would be more restful, and accepted.
-From "Punch."

THE DOVER ROAD.
[David Copperfield here tells of his experiences after his running away from London, where he was very unhappy, to find his 
aunt, Miss Trotwood, who lived at Dover. He had already been robbed of his belongings and most of his money when our story 
begins.]
I sat down on a doorstep, quite spent and exhausted, and with hardly 
breath enough to cry for the loss of my box and
half-guinea. It was by this time dark; I heard the clocks strike ten as I 
sat resting; but it was a summer night
fortunately, and fine weather. When I had recovered my breath, I rose and 
went on. In the midst of my distress, I had
no notion of going back.
I had only three halfpence in the world, and I trudged on miserably until 
I happened to pass a little shop, where it was
written up that ladies' and gentlemen's wardrobes were bought, and that 
the best price was given for rags, bones, and
kitchen-stuff. The master of this shop was sitting at the door in his 
shirt-sleeves, smoking. I went up the next bye-street, took off my waistcoat, rolled it neatly under my arm and came back to the 
shop door. "If you please, sir," I said, "I am to sell this for a fair price."
Mr. Dolloby - Dolloby was the name over the shop-door, at least - took the 
waistcoat, stood his pipe on its head against the door-post, went into the shop, followed by me, snuffed the two candles with his 
fingers, spread the waistcoat on
the counter, looked at it there, held it up against the light, and looked 
at it there, and ultimately said, "What do you
call. a price, now, for this here little weskit?"
" Oh! you know best, sir," I returned modestly.
"I can't be buyer and seller, too," said Mr. Dolloby. " Put a price on 
this here little weskit."
" Would eighteen pence be -?" I hinted, after some hesitation.
Mr. Dolloby rolled it up again and gave it me back. "I should rob my 
family," he said, "if I was to offer ninepence for it."
 This was a very disagreeable way of putting the
business; because it imposed upon me, a perfect
stranger, the unpleasantness of asking Mr. Dolloby
to rob his family on my account. My circumstances
being so very pressing, however, I said I would  take
ninepence for it, if he pleased. Mr. Dolloby, not
without some grumbling, gave ninepence. I wished
him good-night, and walked out of the shop, the
richer by that sum, and the poorer by a waistcoat;
but when I buttoned my jacket that was not much.
Indeed, I foresaw pretty clearly that my jacket would go next, and that I 
should have to make the best of my way to Dover in a shirt and a
pair of trousers, and might deem myself lucky if I got there even in that 
trim.
A plan had occurred to me for passing the night. This was to lie behind 
the wall at the back of my old school, in a corner where there used
to be a haystack. I imagined it would be kind of company to have the 
boys, and the bedroom, where I used to tell the stories, so near me;
although the boys would know nothing of my being there, and the bedroom 
would give me no shelter.
I had had a hard day's work and was pretty well jaded when I found Salem 
House. I found also a haystack in the corner, and I lay down
by it, having first walked round the wall and looked up at the windows, 
and seen that all was dark and silent within. Never shall I forget the
lonely sensation of first lying down without a roof above my head! Sleep 
came upon me as it came upon many other outcasts that night,
and I dreamed of lying in my old school-bed and talking to the boys. I slept though with a knowledge 
in my sleep that it was cold, until the warm
beams of the sun and the ringing of the getting-up bell at Salem House 
awoke me. If I could have hoped that
Steerforth was there, I would have lurked about till he came out alone, 
but I knew he must have left long since. So I
crept away from the wall as the Salem House boys were getting up, and 
struck into the long dusty track, which I had
first known to be the Dover Road, when I was one of them, and when I 
little expected to be the wayfarer I was now, upon it.
I got, that Sunday, through three-and-twenty miles on the straight road, 
though not very easily, for I was new to that
kind of toil. I see myself , as evening closes in, coming over the bridge 
at Rochester, footsore and tired and eating
bread that I had bought for supper. One or two little houses, with the 
notice, " Lodgings for Travellers " hanging out,
had tempted me; but I was afraid of spending the few pence I had, and 
even more afraid of the vicious looks of the
tramps I had met or overtaken. I sought no shelter, therefore, and, 
toiling into Chatham, crept at last upon a sort of
grass-grown battery overlooking a lane, where a sentry was walking to and 
fro. Here I lay down near a cannon; and,
happy in the society of the sentry's footsteps, though he knew nothing of 
my being above him, slept soundly until
morning.
 Very stiff and sore of foot I was in the morning,
and quite dazed by the beating of drums and
marching of troops, which seemed to hem me in
on every side, when I went down towards the long
narrow street. Feeling I could go but a little way that day if I were to reserve any strength for getting to my journey's end, I 
resolved to make the sale of my jacket its principal business.
Accordingly, I took the jacket off that I might learn to do without it; 
and, carrying it under my arm, began a tour of
inspection of the various second-hand shops.
At last I found one that I thought looked promising, at the corner of a 
dirty lane. Into this shop, which was low and
small and darkened, rather than lighted, by a little window overhung with 
clothes, I went with a palpitating heart. 

[From the painting of J. M. W. Turner.
ROCHESTER

 This was not relieved when an ugly old man, with the lower part of his face all covered with a stubbly grey beard, rushed out of 
a dirty den behind, and seized
 me by the hair of my head. He was a dreadful old man to look at, in a filthy flannel waistcoat, and smelling terribly of rum.
 " Oh, what do you want ? " grinned the old man in a fierce, monotonous whine. " Oh my eyes and limbs, what do you want ? 
Oh, my lungs and liver, what do you want ? Oh goroo, goroo! " The last
 repeated word was a kind of rattle in his throat.
" I wanted to know," I said trembling, "if you would buy a jacket."
" Oh, let's see the jacket! " cried the old man.
"Oh, my heart on fire, show the jacket to us! "
With that he took his trembling hands, which were like the claws of a great 
bird, out of my hair, and put on a pair of spectacles, not at all
ornamental to his inflamed eyes.
" Oh, how much for the jacket?" cried the old man, after examining it. "Oh-goroo-how much for the jacket? "
" Half-a-crown," I answered, recovering myself.
" Oh, my lungs and liver," cried the old man.
"No! Oh, my eyes, no! Eighteenpence. Goroo! " Well," said I, glad to have 
closed the bargain, take eighteenpence."
"Oh, my liver! " cried the old man, throwing the jacket on a shelf. " Get 
out of the shop. Oh, my eyes and limbs, don't ask for money; make
it an exchange."
I never was so frightened in my life, but I told him humbly that I wanted 
money and that nothing else was of any use to me, but that I would
wait for it, as he desired, outside. So I went outside, and sat down in the 
shade in a corner; and I sat there so many hours, that the shade
became sunlight, and the sunlight became shade again, and still I sat there 
waiting for the money.
There never was such another drunken madman in that line of business, I 
hope. He made many attempts to induce me to consent to an
exchange, at one time coming out with a fishing-rod, at another with a 
fiddle, at another with a cocked hat, at another with a flute. I
declined all these offers and sat there in desperation, each time asking 
him, with tears in my eyes, for my money or my jacket.
At last he began to pay me, in halfpence at a time, and was full two 
hours in getting to a shilling.
" Oh, my eyes and limbs!" he then cried, peeping hideously out of the 
shop after a long pause. " Will you go for
twopence more?
" I can't," I said; " I shall be starved."
" Oh, my lungs and liver, will you go for threepence? "
" I would go for nothing if I could," I said, "but I want the money badly."
" Oh, goroo! Will you go for fourpence?
I was so faint and weary that I closed with this offer; and, taking the 
money out of his claw, not without trembling, I
went away more hungry and thirsty than I had ever been, a little before 
sunset. At the expense of threepence,
however, I soon refreshed myself completely, and, being then in better 
spirits, limped seven miles along my road.
My bed at night was under another haystack, where I rested comfortably, 
after having washed my blistered feet in a
stream, and dressed them as well as I was able, with some cool leaves. 
When I took the road again next morning, I
found that it lay through hop-grounds, and orchards ruddy with ripe 
apples. I thought it all extremely beautiful, and
made up my mind to sleep among the hops that night, imagining some 
cheerful companionship in the long lines of
poles, with the graceful leaves twining round them.
The tramps were worse than ever that day, and inspired me with a fear 
that is yet quite fresh in my mind. Some of them were most ferocious-looking ruffians, who stared at me as I went by, and 
stopped, perhaps, and called after me
to come back and speak to them, and when I took to my heels, stoned me.
When, after sleeping two more nights in the open, on the sixth day of my flight, I came to Dover, no one could tell me where my 
aunt lived. I felt more miserable and destitute than I had done at any period of my running away. My money was all gone; I had 
nothing left to dispose of ; I was hungry, thirsty and worn out; and I seemed as far from the end as if I had remained in London.
I was sitting on the step of an empty shop, when a fly-driver, coming by with his carriage, dropped a horse-cloth.
Something good-natured in the man's face, as I handed the horse-cloth up, encouraged me to ask him if 
he could tell
me where Miss Trotwood lived, though I had asked the question so often that it almost died upon my 
lips.
" Trotwood, " said he, "let me see. I know the name, too. Old lady? "
" Yes, " I said, " rather."
"Pretty stiff in the back?" said he, making himself upright.
" Yes," I said. " I should think it very likely."
"Carries a bag?" said he: "bag with a good deal of room in it.; is gruffish, and comes down upon you sharp?"
My heart sank within me as I acknowledged the undoubted accuracy of this description.
" Why then, I tell you what," said he. " If you go up there," pointing with his whip towards the 
heights, " and keep right
on till you come to some houses facing the sea, I think you'll hear of her. My opinion is she won't 
stand anything, so
here's a penny for you."
(Following the man's directions, David at last found his aunt, Miss Betsey Trotwood, who, while answering to the description 
given of her, received her nephew with love and kindness.)
-Abridged and adapted from "David Copperfield," by CHARLES DICKENS.

TIM.
For many years Henry had wished to have a dog, and had not neglected to 
say so. He laid less stress on the fact
that he badly wanted a dog than on the fact that a dog was a useful thing 
to have about the house. Therein he thought
he was being tactful and diplomatic; but his remarks, dropped at frequent 
intervals and before those whom he
regarded as the right people, did not seem to have fallen on fruitful 
ground. He had, in fact, almost given up all hope of
ever possessing a dog, when one day a dog actually arrived. Uncle Peter 
brought him. He towed him on a lead into
Mr. Bargery's shop and solemnly presented him to Henry, with a polite 
wish that the animal would never bite his
master nor anybody that his master loved. As for the dog himself, he was 
a little black-and-white terrier, and answered to the name of Tim.
Tim made himself at home at once. He began by tearing round the shop, 
poking his nose into every box and bag
within his reach, and chewing up everything that looked eatable, together with many things that did not. 
Mr. Bargery chased him into the sitting-room
and shut the door. In the sitting-room Tim let everybody know he was 
there. He sniffed at the children's shoes, put his
forefeet into their laps, and looked up into their faces. He barked, 
growled, yelped, whined, pricked up his ears, and
wagged his tail. He dived under the sofa, fetched out one of Mr. 
Bargery's slippers and began tearing it to pieces. His
appetite was insatiable. He ate everything the children gave him and was 
always ready for more.
As Tim's arrival was unexpected, there was no kennel ready for him; so, 
when it was time to go to bed, Henry did not know what to do with him.
" Put him in the shed," suggested Phyllis.
" No," said Jane, " not there! He'll chew up the dolls in my orphanage."
"Well, then," said Henry, "he must sleep up in our bedroom."
To the bedroom he was taken; but he didn't sleep. Neither did Henry nor 
David. Henry tied the dog to the foot of the bed, allowing him about two yards of rope. No sooner was the light out than Tim 
began to whine. At first it was but a
faint whinny, but soon it swelled to the volume of a loud wail. Then it 
gradually died down again. Just as Henry was on
the point of falling asleep something heavy dropped plump on top of him. 
It was Tim. He had leaped on to the bed.
When he was pushed off he began to whine again. Thus it went on all 
night - an unbroken succession of wails, whines, and jumps. Sometimes Henry was the victim of Tim's gymnastic exercises, 
sometimes David; but, whichever it was,
neither of them was allowed to sleep. When daylight came and it was time 
to get up, there was Tim sleeping
peacefully on the floor.
Much as Henry liked his little dog, he did not like his conduct in the 
bedroom. The second night, therefore, Tim was
put in the cellar. The cellar, however, was not at all to his taste, and 
he gave vent to a series of noises which ranged
from a gentle yapping to a loud barking. Henry and David at the top of the 
house could scarcely hear him, and they
slept soundly all night. The rest of the family were not so lucky; far into 
the night their sleep was broken by yelps and growls.
" It's no use, Henry," said his father next morning; " if you keep a dog 
you must treat him properly. The right place for
a dog is a kennel, and the right place for a kennel is in the garden."
"Very well, Father," said Henry, " I'll make a kennel to-day."
And he did. He made one out of a large box and some boards from another 
box; and, when he had finished, he was
so proud of his handiwork that he fetched the family out to admire it. 
Their admiration was not so warm as he could
have wished. That night things were more peaceful. Tim, settled down to 
sleep at once, and so did the people in the
house. Towards morning, however, growls were heard, and the sound of 
something going bumpety-bump in the yard.
When Henry went out the next morning, he found that Tim had been tugging at 
his chain and had dragged his kennel
from one end of the yard to the other.
" He is naughty," said Jane, " because he is tied up. Let him loose and he 
will be good."
" Jane is right as far as this," said Mr. Bargery: "if Tim is not tied to his kennel, he will no longer bump it about the yard."
But Jane was right further than that.
Tim gradually got out of his bad ways. He soon learnt not to bite Jane's 
dolls, not to lick David's paints, and not to chase the cat next door. Henry had something to learn, too. He had to learn to make a 
kennel warm and snug, and to keep it floored with nice clean straw. He had to learn to keep Tim's drinking-trough supplied with 
clean water, and to feed him at the proper time every 
day. And Henry was well repaid for his trouble, for he could never hope to find a more devoted friend than Tim.
-From " The Bargerys," by P. B. BALLARD. (University of London Press.)

THE STEELWORKS.
The steelworks were fifteen miles away. Far and wide the sky was flaring 
with the red glare that leaped from rows of
towering chimneys, for it was pitch dark when Jurgis arrived. The vast 
works, a city in themselves, were surrounded
by a stockade. and already a full hundred men were waiting at the gate 
where new hands were taken on. Soon after
daybreak whistles began to blow, and then thousands of men appeared 
streaming from saloons and boarding-houses
across the way, leaping from trolley-cars that passed - it seemed as if they 
rose out of the ground, in the dim grey
light. A river of them poured in through the gate, and then gradually ebbed 
away again, until there were only a few late
ones running, and the watchman pacing up and down, and the hungry strangers 
stamping and shivering.
Jurgis presented his precious letter, and the gatekeeper sent it to the 
person to whom it was addressed. A
messenger came back to say that Jurgis should wait, and so he came inside 
the gate.
The great mills were getting under way - one could hear a vast stirring, a 
rolling and rumbling and hammering. Little by
little the scene grew plain: towering black buildings here and there, long 
rows of shops and sheds, little railways
branching everywhere, bare grey cinders underfoot and oceans of billowing 
black smoke above. On one side of the
grounds ran a railroad with a dozen tracks, and on the other side lay the 
lake, where steamers came to load.
Jurgis had time enough to stare and speculate, for it was two hours before 
he was summoned. He went into the office
building, where the timekeeper said he would try to find him a job. He had 
never worked in a steel mill before? But he
was ready for anything? Well, then, they would go and see.
So they began a tour among sights that made Jurgis stare amazed. He 
wondered if ever he could get used to working
in a place like this, where the air shook with deafening thunder, and 
whistles shrieked warnings on all sides of him at
once; where miniature steam-engines came rushing upon him, and sizzling, 
quivering, white-hot masses of metal
sped past him, and explosions of fire and flaming sparks dazzled him and 
scorched his face. The men in these mills
were all black with soot, and hollow-eyed and gaunt; they worked with 
fierce intensity, rushing here and there, and
never lifting their eyes from their tasks. Jurgis clung to his guide like 
a scared child to its nurse, and while the
timekeeper hailed one foreman after another to ask if they could use 
another unskilled man, he stared about him and marvelled.
He was taken to the Bessemer furnace, where they made billets of steel - 
a dome-like building the size of a big theatre. Jurgis stood where the gallery of the theatre would have been, and opposite, by the 
stage, he saw three giant cauldrons big enough, for all the fiends of Hades to brew their broth in, full of something white and 
blinding, bubbling and splashing, roaring as if volcanoes were blowing through it. One had to shout to be heard in the place. 
Liquid fire would leap from these cauldrons and scatter like bombs below; and men 
were working there, seeming careless, so
that Jurgis caught his breath with fright.
Then a whistle would toot, and across the curtain of the theatre would 
come a little engine with a car-load of
something to be dumped into one of the receptacles; and then another 
whistle would toot down by the stage, and
another train would back up; and suddenly, without an instant's warning, 
one of the giant kettles began to tilt and
topple, flinging out a jet of hissing, roaring flames.
Jurgis shrank back appalled, for he thought it was an accident. There fell 
a pillar of white flame, dazzling as the sun,
swishing like a huge tree falling in the forest. A torrent of sparks swept 
all the way across the building, overwhelming
everything, hiding it from sight; and then Jurgis looked through the 
fingers of his hands, and saw pouring out of the
cauldron a cascade of living, leaping fire, white with a whiteness not of 
earth, scorching the eyeballs. Incandescent
rainbows shone above it; blue, red, and golden lights played about it; but 
the stream itself was white, ineffable. Then
the great cauldron tilted back again empty, and Jurgis saw to his relief 
that no one was hurt, and he turned and
followed his guide out into the sunlight.
They went through the blast furnaces, through rolling mills where bars of 
steel were tossed about and chopped like
bits of cheese. All around and above, giant machine-arms were flying, giant 
wheels were turning, giant hammers
crashing; travelling cranes creaked and groaned overhead, reaching down 
iron hands and seizing iron prey. It was like
standing in the centre of the earth, where the machinery of time was 
revolving.
By and by they came to the place where steel rails were made. Jurgis heard 
a toot behind him, and jumped out of the way of a car with a white-hot ingot upon it, the size of a man's body. There was a 
sudden crash and the car came to a halt, and the ingot toppled out upon a moving platform, where steel fingers and arms seized 
hold of it, punching it and prodding it into place, and hurrying it into the grip of huge rollers. Then it came out on the other side 
and there were
more crashings and clatterings, and over it was flopped like a pancake on a 
gridiron, and seized again and rushed
back at you through another squeezer.
Thus amid deafening, uproar it clattered to and fro, growing thinner and 
flatter and longer. The ingot seemed almost a
living thing; it did not want to run this mad course, but it was in the 
grip of fate, it was tumbled on, screeching and
clanking and shivering in protest. By and by it was long and thin, a 
great red snake escaped from purgatory; and
then, as it slid through the rollers, you would have sworn that it was 
alive. It writhed and squirmed, and wriggles and
shudders passed out through its tail, all but flinging it off by their 
violence. There was no rest for it until it was cold and
black; and then it needed only to be cut and straightened to be ready for 
a railroad.
It was at the end of this rail's progress that Jurgis got his chance. The rails had to be moved by men with crowbars, and the boss 
here could use another man. So Jurgis took off his coat and set to work on the spot.
-From "The Jungle," by UPTON SINCLAIR.

THE MAGIC SHOP.
I had seen the Magic Shop from afar several times; I had passed it once or twice, a shop window of alluring little objects, magic 
balls, magic pens, wonderful 
cones, ventriloquist dolls, the material of the
basket trick, packs of cards that looked all right, and all that sort of 
thing; but never had I thought of going in until one
day, Gip hauled me by my finger right up to the window.
"If I was rich," said he, dabbing a finger at The Disappearing Egg, " I'd 
buy myself that. And that" - which was The
Crying Baby, Very Human -  and that," - which was a mystery called Buy One 
and Astonish your Friends. "Anything," said Gip, " will disappear under one of those cones; and there, Daddy, is The Vanishing 
Half-penny - only
they've put it this way up so that we can't see how it's done."
Unconsciously Gip lugged my finger doorward, and we went into the shop. It 
was a little narrow shop, not very well lit,
and the door-bell pinged with a plaintive note as we closed the door behind 
us. For a moment or so we were alone
and could glance about us. There was a tiger in papier-mache, a grave, 
kind-eyed tiger that waggled his head in a
methodical manner; there were several crystal spheres, a china hand holding 
magic cards, magic fish bowls, and an
immodest magic hat which shamelessly displayed its springs. On the floor 
were magic mirrors: one to draw you out
long and thin, one to swell your head and vanish your legs, and one to make 
you short and fat like a draughtsman;
and, while we were laughing at these, the shopman came in - a curious, 
sallow, dark man, with one ear larger than
the other, and a chin like the toe-cap of a boot.
"What can we have the pleasure?" he asked.
"I want," I said, " to buy my little boy a few simple tricks. "
" Um! " said the shopman, and scratched his head as if thinking. Then, 
quite distinctly, he drew from his head a glass
ball. " Something in this way? " he said, and held it out. The action was 
unexpected. I had seen the trick done at
entertainments endless times before, but I had not expected it here. "That's good," I said, with a laugh. Gip stretched out his hand 
to take this object, and found merely a blank palm.
"It's in your pocket?" said the shopman, and there it was!
"How much will that be?" I asked.
"We make no charge for glass balls," said the shopman politely. " We get 
them " - he picked one out of his elbow as
he spoke-" free." He produced another from the back of his neck, and laid 
it beside its predecessor on the counter.
Gip looked at them and at the shopman. "You may have those, too," said 
he, "and if you don't mind, one from my
mouth - so!" In profound silence, Gip put away the four balls, took hold of 
my finger again, and nerved himself for the
next event.
"We get all our smaller tricks in that way," the shopman remarked. " Our 
larger tricks and our daily provisions and all
the other things we want, we get out of that hat. I don't know if you 
noticed our inscription - The Genuine Magic Shop.
There is absolutely no deception, sir." He seemed to be carrying out the 
joke pretty thoroughly, I thought.
"You were saying," he said, addressing himself
to Gip, "before you came in, that you would
like one of our Buy One and Astonish your Friends
boxes ? " 
Gip, after a gallant effort, said, " Yes."
" It's in your pocket."
And leaning over the counter, this amazing person produced the article in 
the customary conjurer's manner. " Paper,"
he said, and took a sheet out of the empty hat with springs; " string," 
and behold his mouth was a string-box from
which he drew an unending thread. When he had tied the parcel, he bit off 
the string and, it seemed to me, swallowed
the ball of string. Then he lit a candle at the nose of one of the 
ventriloquist dummies, stuck one of his fingers (which
had become sealing-wax red) into the flame, and so sealed the parcel. 
"Then there was The Disappearing Egg," he remarked, and produced one from within my coat-breast, and packed it, and also The 
Crying Baby, Very Human. I handed each parcel to Gip as it was ready, and he clasped them to his chest.
Gip said very little, but his eyes were eloquent; the clutch of his arms 
was eloquent. These, you know, were real
Magics.
Then, with a start, I discovered something moving about in my 
hat - something soft and jumpy. I whipped it off, and a
ruffled pigeon dropped out and ran behind the counter. " Tut, tut," said the shopman, 
smartly relieving me of my head-dress; "careless bird, and - as I live - nesting! " He shook my hat and shook into his 
extended hand two or three eggs, a large
marble, a watch, about half-a-dozen glass balls, and then crumpled, 
crinkled paper, more and more and more. It rose
and billowed on the counter, until he was nearly hidden from us, until he 
was altogether hidden, and still his voice
went on and on: "We none of us know what the fair semblance of a human 
being may conceal, sir. Are we all then-"
His voice stopped, exactly as when you hit a neighbour's gramophone with a 
well-aimed brick. The same instant there
was silence, the rustle of the paper stopped, and everything was still . . .
" Have you done with my hat? " I said, after an interval.
There was no answer.
I stared at Gip, and Gip stared at me; and there were our distortions in 
the magic mirrors, looking very rum, and
grave, and quiet . . .
"Let's look behind the counter, Gip," I said.
"He's making fun of us." I led Gip round, and what do you think was behind 
the counter ? No one at all! Only my hat on
the floor and a common conjurer's lop-eared, white rabbit, lost in 
meditation, and looking as stupid and crumpled as
only a conjurer's rabbit can do.
"Daddy," said Gip in a guilty whisper, " I do like this shop."
" So should I," I said to myself, " if the counter wouldn't suddenly extend itself so as to shut one off from the door."
Gip's eyes were following the rabbit as it lolloped past us, and squeezed through a door I had certainly not noticed a minute 
before. Then this door opened wider, And the man with one ear larger than the other appeared again. He was smiling still, but his 
eye met mine with something between
amusement and defiance. " You'd like to see our showroom, sir," he said. 
Gip tugged my finger forward. I glanced at
the counter and met the shopman's eye again. I was beginning to think the 
magic just a little too genuine. " We
haven't very much time," I said. But somehow we were inside the showroom 
before I could finish that.
There were many things that Gip fancied there. "Is that a Magic Sword? " 
he said.
"Yes, a Magic Toy Sword. It does not bend, break, nor cut the fingers. It 
renders the bearer invisible in battle against
anyone under eighteen. Half-a-crown to seven and sixpence, according to 
size. These sets on cards are for juvenile
knights-errant, and very useful - shield of safety, sandals of swiftness, 
helmet of invisibility!"
" Oh, Daddy! " gasped Gip.
I tried to find out what they cost, but the shopman did not heed me. He 
had got Gip now; he had got him away from
my finger; he had embarked upon the exposition of all his confounded 
stock, and nothing was going to stop him.
Presently I saw, with a qualm of distrust, and something very like 
jealousy, that Gip had hold of this person's finger,
as he usually had hold of mine. No doubt the fellow was interesting, I 
thought, and had an interestingly faked lot of
stuff, really good faked stuff, still
I wandered after them, keeping an eye on this juggler fellow. After all, 
Gip was enjoying it, and, no doubt, when the
time came to go, we should be able to go quite easily. The shopman showed 
Gip magic trains which ran without
steam or clockwork, and then some very, very valuable boxes of soldiers, 
which all came alive, directly you took off
the lid and said - I haven't a very quick ear and it was a 
tongue-twisting sound, but Gip got it in no time. " Bravo! " said
the shopman, putting the men back into the box and handing it to Gip. "Now! " said the shopman, and in a moment
Gip had them all alive again. The shopman swept the little men back 
again, shut the lid, waved the box in the air, and
there it was, in brown paper, tied up and - with Gip's full name and address on the paper!
The shopman laughed at my amazement. " This is the genuine magic," he 
said, " the real thing."
" It's almost too genuine for my taste," I said.
After that he fell to showing Gip tricks, odd tricks, and still odder the 
way they were done; and there was the dear
little chap nodding his busy bit of a head in the sagest manner. Presently
he was standing on a stool, and the shopman was holding a sort of drum in 
his hand. "Hide and seek, Daddy!" cried
Gip. "You're He!" And before I could do anything to prevent it, the 
shopman had clapped the big drum over him. I saw
what was up directly. " Take that off," I cried, "this instant! You'll 
frighten him. Take it off!"
The shopman with the unequal ears did so without a word, and held the big 
cylinder towards me to show its
emptiness. And the stool was vacant! In that instant my boy had utterly 
disappeared! I came up to the grinning
shopman, and kicked his stool aside.
" Stop this folly! " I said. " Where is my boy? " " You see," he said, 
still displaying the drum's interior, " there is no
deception-"
I put out my hand to grip him, and he eluded me. I snatched again, and he 
turned from me and opened a door to
escape. " Stop! " I said, and he laughed, receding. I leapt after 
him - into utter darkness. Thud!
" Lor' bless my heart, I didn't see you coming, sir! " I was in Regent 
Street, and I had collided with a decent-looking
workman; and a yard away, perhaps, looking extremely puzzled, was Gip. He
turned and came to me with a bright little smile, as though for a moment he 
had missed me. And he was carrying four
parcels in his arm! Confound it! What could be in them?
When we reached home and opened the parcels, we found that three of them 
contained boxes of ordinary lead
soldiers, but of so good a quality as to make Gip forget that originally 
these parcels had been Magic Tricks, and the
fourth contained a little, living, white kitten, in excellent health and 
appetite and temper.
This all happened six months ago; and now I am beginning to believe it is 
all right. The kitten had only the magic
natural to all kittens, and the soldiers seem as steady a company as any 
colonel could desire.
One day I said, "How would you like your soldiers to come alive, Gip, and 
march about by themselves? "
"Mine do," said Gip. " I just have to say a word I know before I open the lid."
I showed no unbecoming surprise, and since then I have dropped in upon him 
once or twice, when the soldiers were
about, but so far I have never discovered them performing in anything like 
a magical manner . . . it's so difficult to tell.
There is also a question of finance. I have an incurable habit of paying 
bills, and I have been up and down Regent
Street several times, looking for that shop. I am inclined to think, indeed, that in that matter honour is satisfied, and that, since 
Gip's name and address are known to them, I may very well leave it to these people, whoever they may be, to send in their bill in 
their own time.
-Adapted and Abridged from "The Short Stories of H. G. Wells." (Ernest Benn.)

ST. ANTHONY IN ROSELAND
I had no idea where to make for in Cornwall. One road was as good as another. I took the map, and one 
name curled itself round my heart. I do not think that in the whole
length and breadth of England there is a more beautiful name. But to fall in love with a name is like 
falling in love with a voice heard over a telephone. A meeting might prove
fatal. I whispered the name twice, and took the inevitable road to St. Anthony in Roseland.
I am writing in the tiny bedroom of a cottage in St. Anthony in Roseland. The thatch comes down so 
low that the upper part of the window-frame has a stubby beard. I can
see when I look out of the window a clump of trees and a field shaped like a great dome; beyond is a 
vast emptiness of sky that means the sea. I cannot see the water, but I
can hear a steady whisper of waves breaking in the little rocky bay below. That and the song of birds 
are the only sounds in St. Anthony in Roseland.
I have said that I came here because I liked the name. I came prepared for the worst; for a mine 
shaft and a street of dreary shops. At Tregoney I left the main road and
dived in a labyrinth of lanes so small that there was no clearance between the car and the 
hedge-banks. Green plants caught me by the arm and seemed to say: "Don't go on;
don't go on, a man that expects St. Anthony in Roseland to look as it sounds is only gathering one 
more disappointment . . ."
But I went on; and I came at length to the darkest tunnel of a lane I have ever seen. The hedges had 
grown up and formed arches the whole length of it; and the lane dipped down and down in green gloom, and then rose steeply in 
the manner 
of these Cornish lanes, bending suddenly to give a view of the sea,
startlingly near, breaking on a rocky coast, the high hills lying back, spread with
neat cultivated fields. Turning a corner I came to St. Anthony in Roseland.
Now, if anything you have believed in has continued to be worth your faith, if anything you have 
wanted has not fallen below the expectation, you will understand my wonder
when I saw St. Anthony.
Twenty whitewashed cottages stood dotted about among tall hedges. They were covered with flowers. The 
bees were busy in the gardens. In many gardens were those typical
Cornish palm-trees that rise twelve feet in the air and end in leaves like bunches of green bayonets. 
There was no inn, no post-office, and the nearest shop I learned is at St.
Gerrans, five miles down those luscious lanes. St. Anthony in Roseland seemed lost, and happy to be 
lost, dreaming beside the sea.
There was no sign of life. The little white cottages, covered with brier roses and ivy geraniums, 
stood with doors open, yet no sign of man, woman or child. No one seemed to
have heard me drive up. Not a sound! I shut off the engine and walked on. I saw a footpath over a 
field; below was a tiny bay, nestling between two gaunt cliffs. The waves
came booming over the rocks; the seagulls were flying with wild lonely cries. I stood there a long 
time. Dusk was falling. I shook myself free from the wild spell of this place,
and asked myself where I could rest this night, for the map shows no way out of St. Anthony but by 
ten miles of those bosky lanes, and then a ferry, and another ten miles to
Falmouth. I was tired. Would it be possible to spend the night in St. Anthony and find out what sort 
of people lived there ? It would be good to stay in such silence, in such
remoteness. I went back to the cottages.
A rosy middle-aged woman, wearing a print apron, was standing at the door of a pink cottage and 
looking at my car as though it were an unnatural phenomenon. A great bush
of veronica was in bloom in the garden, the porch was smothered in geraniums, Canterbury bells stood 
beneath the windows, and the paths were lined with London pride.
" I wonder," I said, "if you could tell me where I could stay the night!"
"Well," said the woman, " I have nothing for dinner, sir, but eggs and cream, because we have no 
shops and everything is brought us from St. Gerrans - or else I'd gladly give
you my spare room."
I told her that eggs and cream were the only things I would dream of eating in St. Anthony in 
Roseland.
"Well," she said, "come and see the room."
It was small and white and spotless, this room. The kind of room the May Queen may have slept in.
" I notice," I said, looking through the window, "that there is no one about. St. Anthony seems asleep. "
" Well you see, sir, there are no children here now. We are old. We closed the school years ago. As 
children grow up here they have to go away and do for themselves. My
boy, who was in the war, and my two girls are doing well. Some children come back to the farms when 
their fathers die."
So that is the secret of St. Anthony in Roseland. It has had its children, they have left the nest, 
and the old people stay on among the flowers. I looked outside and saw a
tumble-down shack, half cow-shed, half chapel, its wood rotting and its beams falling in.
" Oh that's the schoolroom! I can remember when it was full every morning; and the noise and the 
chatter . . ."
Now the nettle and the foxglove seek to make a green pall for all that is left of youth in St. Anthony in Roseland . . .
It grows dark, the sun has gone down, the peace of open fields and open sky and the scent of warm flowers come in to me 
through the windows. The restless rhythm of the sea is like an endless wind blowing through a wood. One by one the sounds of 
day are stilled, until a robin is left alone to sing his high-pitched elegy.
The light is drawn out of the sky minute by minute, and the little throatful of heartache goes on and 
on in the gathering darkness . . .
" I've lit the lamp, sir, and supper's ready when you are ! "
"I'll be down in a second."
Down the darkening lane I hear the tramp of boots. An immense stillness seems to have closed its hand on the earth, and the 
words fade from  this paper.
-Adapted from " In Search of England," by H. V. MORTON. (Methuen.)

THE CAREERS OF HENRY AND DAVID BARGERY.
I. HENRY.
The young Bargerys were no longer children; they were youths and maidens whose thoughts were often 
wistfully turned towards the future. Each dreamed his own dreams.
Henry's were not of the contemplative sort. He looked forward to a life of action and adventure, and 
liked to think of setting things moving, and moving fast. Speed in itself delighted
him, and the efficiency of a smoothly running machine. He even liked the smell of petrol, a single 
sniff of which more readily stirred in him the spirit of romance than "all the
perfumes of Arabia." When, therefore, at the age of fourteen he was offered by his father the choice 
of going to a secondary school or a technical institute, he did not hesitate a
moment; he chose the technical institute.
At the institute Henry worked hard and worked happily. His special subject of study was 
engineering - engineering in all its branches. There was one branch, however, that captured
him completely. When he came to study the internal-combustion engine - the engine that drives the 
motor-car and the aeroplane - he felt that he had at last found his vocation. He
knew now what he wanted to become. It was the motor industry that lured him; and, in fact, it was the 
motor industry that got him. When he was seventeen years of age, he was
employed by a large motor-car firm, which served as agents for all the important makes and had 
control of several garages and repairing shops.
Henry's employers were not long in discovering his merits. They soon saw that, not only had he an 
extensive knowledge of cars and their construction, but he also had a special
flair for defects. When anything went wrong with a car, he could
by a sort of instinct put his finger at once on the source of the trouble. It was largely a matter of 
knowledge, but not entirely so. Others, with the same amount of knowledge,
would fiddle about with the car for hours, testing now this now that, till at last they found the 
troublesome spot. Henry seemed to go straight to the spot at once. It was quite
uncanny. When they asked him how he managed it, he would grin and say it was a gift.
Mr. Bargery once remarked to a friend, "What
Henry doesn't know about
motor-cars isn't worth knowing." This was something
more than a piece of paternal
brag. Henry's knowledge of cars was amazing-or perhaps it was not amazing 
considering the hours be had
spent in studying them. His
room was stocked with books
about them. He read about
cars, he talked about cars, he dreamt about cars.

THE SOURCE OF THE TROUBLE.

He could identify the make of a car half a mile away, and could tell you all about its good points and its bad. He could take an 
old derelict car to pieces and put it together again so that even if it went badly, it at least went. This special skill of his he was 
able to use to his 
personal advantage. Beginning with a little two-seater, which he picked up for an old
song and mended to admiration, he proceeded through a long series of exchanges and repairs, and ended 
up with possessing a fine four-seater.
David remarked one evening: " Henry always seems to be able to get a motor-car for nothing."
" Quite true," was Henry's retort, " but I have not yet found a way of getting petrol for nothing, 
and getting a car licence for nothing, and getting a garage rent free for simply
repairing the roof."
" But you are getting good wages, aren't you, Henry? " asked David. " What do you get now? "
" Wages, David, wages? " said Henry, sticking out his chest. " I no longer receive wages, I receive
a salary."
"And if you ask the same sort of question in
a few years' time, David," remarked Mr. Bargery, "you will have to say not, 'What is your salary?' 
but, 'What is your income? "'
" That's right, Dad," was Henry's rejoinder, "that's about my mark."
At any rate, Henry, by the time he was twenty, was able not only to support himself, but to add 
something to the family exchequer.
II. DAVID.
From the wordly point of view David was not quite so fortunate as Henry; for David had chosen the 
career of an artist, and had to discover that in the modern world there was just
as much a slump in pictures as there was a boom in motor-cars. But that in no way damped his ardour, 
and in no way made him regret his choice. Having gained a scholarship to
an Art School when he was eleven years of age, he stayed there for about six years, partly continuing 
his general education, but mainly studying the various branches of pictorial
art. From there he proceeded to the Redmayne School of Art, where he mixed with students of all kinds 
and creeds.
David worked hard in the studio, he spent hours and hours studying the various schools of art in the 
picture galleries, and he tried to follow as sincerely as he could the light that was in him. The result was that after he left the 
Redmayne he 
came to be regarded as one of the most brilliant products of the school. David
said it was luck; his, sister, Jane, said it was genius. But whether through luck or through genius, 
he certainly got on. Some of his oil-paintings were hung in the Royal Academy,
and one of them was bought by an art gallery. His etchings were in great demand. He developed a technique of his own in water 
colours.

IN THE PICTURE GALLERIES.

He illustrated one or two books. He tried his hand at posters and had little difficulty in selling them. He never forgot the thrill he 
felt on seeing his first poster on a hoarding. He and Jane passed that hoarding again and again. They viewed it from every 
available angle and from every possible distance.
"Do you remember," said Jane, "that this is the very hoarding you used to be so fond of looking at 
when you were a little boy? You used to stand in the traffic to see it to the best
advantage, and I
used to be wild with anxiety lest you should be run over. And now to think that your poster should be 
up there! "
"And a jolly good poster it is," said David.
"It is," said Jane, "whatever may be said for the soap it is supposed to advertise."
-Abridged from " The Bargerys," by P. B. BALLARD. (University of London Press.)

A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG   
by Charles Lamb

Mankind, says a Chinese manuscript, for the first seventy thousand ages ate his meat raw, clawing 
or biting it from the living animal. The art of roasting, or rather broiling,
was accidently discovered in the following manner.
The swine-herd Ho-ti, having gone out into the woods one morning, as his manner was, to collect mast 
for his hogs, left his cottage in charge of his eldest son Bo-bo, a great
lubberly boy, who, being fond of playing with fire, let some sparks escape into a bundle of straw, 
which kindling quickly spread the conflagration over every part of their poor
mansion, till it was reduced to ashes. Together with the cottage (a sorry antediluvian makeshift of a 
building), what was of much more importance, a fine litter of young pigs,
no less than nine in number, perished. China pigs have been esteemed a luxury all over the East from 
the remotest periods that we read of.
Bo-bo was in utmost consternation, as you may think, not so much for the sake of the tenement, which 
his father and he could easily build up again with a few dry branches,
as for the loss of the pigs. While, he was thinking what he should say to his father, and wringing 
his hands over the smoking remnants of one of those untimely sufferers, an
odour assailed his nostrils, unlike any scent which he had before experienced. What could it proceed 
from? Not from the cottage. He had smelt that smell before; indeed, this
was by no means the first accident of the kind which had occurred through the negligence of  this 
unlucky young firebrand. Much less did it resemble that of any known herb,
weed, or flower. A premonitory moistening at the same time overflowed his nether lip. He knew not 
what to think.
He next stooped down to feel if there were any signs of life in the pig. He burnt his fingers, and to 
cool them he applied them in his booby fashion to his mouth. Some of the
crumbs of the scorched skin had come away with his fingers and for the first time in his life (in the 
world's life, indeed) he tasted - crackling! Again he felt and fumbled at the pig.
It did not burn him so much now; still he licked his fingers from a sort of habit. The truth at 
length broke into his slow understanding, that it was the pig that smelt so, and the
pig that tasted so delicious; and surrendering himself up to the new-born pleasure, he fell to 
tearing up whole handfuls of the scorched skin with the flesh next it. He was
cramming it down his throat in his beastly fashion, when his sire entered amid the smoking rafters. 
He was armed with a cudgel, and, finding how affairs stood, began to rain
blows upon the young rogue's shoulders, as thick as hailstones, which Bo-bo heeded no more than if 
they had been flies. His father might lay on, but he could not beat him
from his pig till he had fairly made an end of it. Then something like the following dialogue took 
place.
"You graceless whelp, what are you devouring there? Is it not enough that you have burnt down three 
houses with your dog's tricks but you
must be eating fire, and I know not what - what have you got there, I say? "
"Oh, Father, the pig, the pig, do come and taste how nice the burnt pig eats."
The ears of Ho-ti tingled with horror. He cursed his son, and he cursed himself that ever he should 
have a son that would eat burnt pig.
Bo-bo, whose scent was wonderfully sharpened since morning, soon raked out another pig, and fairly 
rending it asunder, thrust the lesser half by main force into the fists of Ho-ti, still crying out, " Eat, eat, the burnt pig, Father, only 
taste! " All the while he was cramming 
himself as if he would choke.
Ho-ti trembled in every joint while he grasped the abominable thing, wavering whether he should not 
put his son to death for an unnatural young monster. Then, the crackling
scorching his fingers, he applied the same remedy to them, and in his turn tasted the pig's flavour, 
which, make what sour mouths he would for a pretence, proved not
altogether displeasing to him. In conclusion (for the manuscript here is a little tedious) both 
father and son fairly sat down to the meal, and never left off till they had
despatched all that remained of the litter.
Bo-bo was strictly enjoined not to let the secret escape, for the neighbours would certainly have 
stoned them for a couple of abominable wretches, who could think of
improving upon the good meat which God had sent them. Nevertheless, strange stories got about. It was 
observed that Ho-ti's cottage was burnt down now more frequently
than ever. Nothing but fires from this time forward. Some would break out in broad day, others in the 
night-time. Whenever the sow had a litter, so sure was the house of Ho-ti
to be in a blaze; and Ho-ti, instead of chastising his son, grew more indulgent to him than ever.
At length they were watched, the terrible mystery discovered, and father and son summoned to take 
their trial at Pekin. Evidence was given, the obnoxious food itself
produced in court, and verdict about to be pronounced, when the foreman of the jury begged that some 
of the burnt pig might be handed into the box. He handled it, and they
all handled it, and, burning their fingers as Bo-bo and his father had done before them, and nature 
prompting to them the same remedy, to the surprise of the whole court,
townsfolk, strangers, reporters, and all present, they brought in a verdict of Not Guilty.
The judge, who was a shrewd fellow, winked at this manifestly wrong decision, and, when the court was 
dismissed, went privily and bought up all the pigs that could be had for
love or money. In a few days his lordship's house was observed to be on fire. The thing took wing, 
and now there was nothing to be seen but fires in every direction. Fuel and
pigs grew enormously dear all over the district. The insurance offices one and all shut up shop. 
People built slighter and slighter every day, until it was feared that the very
science of architecture would in no long time be lost to the world.
 Thus this custom of firing houses continued, till
in process of time, says the manuscript, a sage
arose who made the discovery that the flesh of
swine, or indeed of any other animal, might be
cooked (burnt as they called it) without the
necessity of consuming a whole house to cook it.
Then first began the rude form of gridiron. Roasting by the string, or spit, came in a century or two later. By slow degrees, 
concludes the
manuscript, do the most useful and seemingly the most obvious arts make their way among mankind.  
Without placing too implicit faith in the account above given, it must be
agreed that, if a worthy pretext for so dangerous an experiment as setting houses on fire (especially in these days) could be 
assigned in favour of any culinary object, that
pretext and excuse might be found in ROAST PIG.



