fair had the appearance of an hysterical outrage
on the afternoon sunshine. At the foot of the garden they struck up
a "burying tune," and passed down the road, shouting it with all
their lungs.

I caught up a book and rushed out into the back garden for fresh air.
Even out of doors it was insufferably hot, and soon I flung myself
down on the bench within the arbour and set myself to read. A plank
behind me had started, and after a while the edge of it began to gall
my shoulders as I leant back. I tried once or twice to push it into
its place, without success, and then, in a moment of irritation, gave
it a tug. It came away in my hand, and something rolled out on the
bench before me, and broke in two.

I picked it up. It was a lump of dough, rudely moulded to the shape
of a woman, with a rusty brass-headed nail stuck through the breast.
Around the body was tied a lock of fine light-brown hair--a woman's,
by its length.

After a careful examination, I untied the lock of hair, put the doll
back in its place behind the plank, and returned to the house: for I
had a question or two to put to my landlady.

"Was the dead woman at all like her elder sister?" I asked. "Was she
black-haired, for instance?"

"No," answered my landlady; "she was shorter and much fairer.
You might almost call her a light-haired woman."

I hoped she would pardon me for changing the subject abruptly and
asking an apparently ridiculous question, but would she call a man
mad if she found him whispering secrets into a bee-hive?

My landlady promptly replied that, on the contrary, she would think
him extremely sensible; for that, unless bees were told of all that
was happening in the household to which they belonged, they might
consider themselves neglected, and leave the place in wrath.
She asserted this to be a notorious fact.

"I have one more question," I said. "Suppose that you found in your
garden a lock of hair--a lock such as this, for instance--what would
you do with it?"

She looked at it, and caught her breath sharply.

"I'm no meddler," she said at last; "I should burn it."

"Why?"

"Because if 'twas left about, the birds might use it for their nests,
and weave it in so tight that the owner couldn't rise on Judgment
day."

So I burnt the lock of hair in her presence; because I wanted its
owner to rise on Judgment day and state a case which, after all, was
no affair of mine.

THE MAGIC SHADOW.

Once upon a time