) with
the rabbit in the wood. There was an act of shocking cruelty, done
idly, almost unconsciously. I was not shocked at all, child as I was,
and quickly moved to pity and terror, because I knew that the creature
was not to be judged by our standards. From this and other things of
the sort which I have observed, and from this tale of Beckwith's, I
judge, that, to the fairy kind, directly life ceases to be lived at
the full, the object, be it fairy, or animal, or vegetable, is not
perceived by the other to exist. Thus, if a fairy should die, the
others would not know that its accidents were there; if a rabbit (as
in the case cited) should be caught it would therefore cease to be
rabbit. We ourselves have very much the same habit of regard toward
plant life. Our attitude to a tree or a growing plant ceases the
moment that plant is out of the ground. It is then, as we say,
_dead_--that is, it ceases to be a plant. So also we never scruple to
pluck the flowers, or the whole flower-scape from a plant, to put it
in our buttonhole or in the bosom of our friend, and thereafter to
cease our interest in the plant as such. It now becomes a memory, a
_gage d'amour_, a token or a sudden glory--what you will. This is the
habit of mankind; but I know of rare ones, both men and women, who
never allow dead flowers to be thrown into the draught, but always
give them decent burial, either cremation or earth to earth. I find
that admirable, yet don't condemn their neighbours, nor consider
fairies cruel who torture the living and disregard the maimed or the
dead.]

"Now I come to the tragical part of my story, and wish with all my
heart that I could leave it out. But beyond the full confession I have
made to my wife, the County Police and the newspapers, I feel that I
should not shrink from any admission that may be called for of how
much I have been to blame. In May, on the 13th of May, Thumbeline,
Bran, and our only child, Florrie, disappeared.

"It was a day, I remember well, of wonderful beauty. I had left them
all three together in the water meadow, little thinking of what was in
store for us before many hours. Thumbeline had been crowning Florrie
with a wreath of flowers. She had gathered cuckoo-pint and marsh
marigolds and woven them together, far more deftly than any of us
could have done, into a chaplet. I remember the curious winding,
wandering air she had been singing (without any words, as usual) over
her business, and how