ave taught the giants their true position. In the meantime you could
yourself have made the giants cut down two-thirds of their coarse
fruit-trees to give room to the little delicate ones! You lost your
chance with the Lovers, Mr. Vane! You speculated about them instead of
helping them!"

CHAPTER XXIX. THE PERSIAN CAT

I sat in silence and shame. What he said was true: I had not been a wise
neighbour to the Little Ones!

Mr. Raven resumed:

"You wronged at the same time the stupid creatures themselves. For them
slavery would have been progress. To them a few such lessons as you
could have given them with a stick from one of their own trees, would
have been invaluable."

"I did not know they were cowards!"

"What difference does that make? The man who grounds his action on
another's cowardice, is essentially a coward himself.--I fear worse will
come of it! By this time the Little Ones might have been able to protect
themselves from the princess, not to say the giants--they were always
fit enough for that; as it was they laughed at them! but now, through
your relations with her,----"

"I hate her!" I cried.

"Did you let her know you hated her?"

Again I was silent.

"Not even to her have you been faithful!--But hush! we were followed
from the fountain, I fear!"

"No living creature did I see!--except a disreputable-looking cat that
bolted into the shrubbery."

"It was a magnificent Persian--so wet and draggled, though, as to look
what she was--worse than disreputable!"

"What do you mean, Mr. Raven?" I cried, a fresh horror taking me by the
throat. "--There was a beautiful blue Persian about the house, but
she fled at the very sound of water!--Could she have been after the
goldfish?"

"We shall see!" returned the librarian. "I know a little about cats of
several sorts, and there is that in the room which will unmask this one,
or I am mistaken in her."

He rose, went to the door of the closet, brought from it the mutilated
volume, and sat down again beside me. I stared at the book in his hand:
it was a whole book, entire and sound!

"Where was the other half of it?" I gasped.

"Sticking through into my library," he answered.

I held my peace. A single question more would have been a plunge into a
bottomless sea, and there might be no time!

"Listen," he said: "I am going to read a stanza or two. There is one
present who, I imagine, will hardly enjoy the reading!"

He opened the vellum cov