ing and watching for a further game.

"I can't possibly," said Miss Jones, "allow that dog in here during
lesson hours. It's impossible."

"Oh, but Miss Jones--" began Jeremy.

"Not one word," said she, "let us have no more of this. Lead him from
the room, Jeremy!"

"But, Miss Jones, he must be here. He's learning too. In a day or two
he'll be as good as anything, really he will. He's so intelligent. He
really thought it was his to play with, and he did give it up, didn't
he, as soon as I said--"

"Enough," said Miss Jones, "I will listen to no more. I say he is not to
remain--"

"But if I promise--" said Jeremy.

Then Miss Jones made a bad mistake. Wearied of the argument, wishing to
continue the lesson, and hoping perhaps to please her tormentors, she
said meekly:

"Well, if he really is good, perhaps--"

From that instant her doom was sealed. The children exchanged a glance
of realisation. Jeremy smiled. The lesson was continued. What possessed
Jeremy now? What possesses any child, naturally perhaps, of a kindly and
even sentimental nature at the sight of something helpless and in its
power? Is there any cruelty in after life like the cruelty of a small
boy, and is there anything more powerful, more unreasoning, and more
malicious than the calculating tortures that small children devise for
those weaker than themselves? Jeremy was possessed with a new power.

It was something almost abstract in its manifestations; it was something
indecent, sinister, secret, foreign to his whole nature felt by him now
for the first time, unanalysed, of course, but belonging, had he known
it, to that world of which afterwards he was often to catch glimpses,
that world of shining white faces in dark streets, of muffled cries
from shuttered windows, of muttered exclamations, half caught, half
understood. He was never again to be quite free from the neighbourhood
of that half-world; he would never be quite sure of his dominance of it
until he died.

He had never felt anything like this power before. With the Jampot
his relations had been quite simple; he had been rebellious, naughty,
disobedient, and had been punished, and there was an end. Now there was
a game like tracking Red Indians in the prairie or tigers in the jungle.

He watched Miss Jones and discovered many things about her. He
discovered that when she made mistakes in the things that she taught
them she was afraid to confess to her mistakes, and so made them wo