ll that remained to tell of the tragedy just enacted.
Yet Nature smiled and sang on, pitiless, gay, impartial. To her, who
took no sides, there was every bit as much to be said for the hawk
as for the chaffinch. Both were her children, and she would show no
preferences.

Further on, a hedgehog lay dead athwart the path--nay, more than dead;
decadent, distinctly; a sorry sight for one that had known the fellow in
more bustling circumstances. Nature might at least have paused to shed
one tear over this rough jacketed little son of hers, for his wasted
aims, his cancelled ambitions, his whole career of usefulness cut
suddenly short. But not a bit of it! Jubilant as ever, her song went
bubbling on, and "Death-in-Life," and again, "Life-in-Death," were its
alternate burdens. And looking round, and seeing the sheep-nibbled heels
of turnips that dotted the ground, their hearts eaten out of them in
frost-bound days now over and done, I seemed to discern, faintly, a
something of the stern meaning in her valorous chant.

My invisible companion was singing also, and seemed at times to be
chuckling softly to himself, doubtless at thought of the strange
new lessons he was teaching me; perhaps, too, at a special bit of
waggishness he had still in store. For when at last he grew weary of
such insignificant earthbound company, he deserted me at a certain
spot I knew; then dropped, subsided, and slunk away into nothingness.
I raised my eyes, and before me, grim and lichened, stood the ancient
whipping-post of the village; its sides fretted with the initials of a
generation that scorned its mute lesson, but still clipped by the stout
rusty shackles that had tethered the wrists of such of that generation's
ancestors as had dared to mock at order and law. Had I been an infant
Sterne, here was a grand chance for sentimental output! As things were,
I could only hurry homewards, my moral tail well between my legs, with
an uneasy feeling, as I glanced back over my shoulder, that there was
more in this chance than met the eye.

And outside our gate I found Charlotte, alone and crying. Edward, it
seemed, had persuaded her to hide, in the full expectation of being duly
found and ecstatically pounced upon; then he had caught sight of the
butcher's cart, and, forgetting his obligations, had rushed off for
a ride. Harold, it further appeared, greatly coveting tadpoles, and
top-heavy with the eagerness of possession, had fallen into the pond.
This