y and capricious, always
wanting to climb or creep in places where they were not wanted, and
resolutely drooping and fading away when they were desired to flourish.
Animals, on the other hand, accepted the world as it was and made the
best of it, and children, at least nice children, uncontaminated by grown-
up influences, lived in worlds of their own making.

Von Kwarl held no acknowledged official position in the country of his
residence, but it was an open secret that those responsible for the real
direction of affairs sought his counsel on nearly every step that they
meditated, and that his counsel was very rarely disregarded. Some of the
shrewdest and most successful enactments of the ruling power were
believed to have originated in the brain-cells of the bovine-fronted
Stammgast of the Brandenburg Cafe.

Around the wood-panelled walls of the Cafe were set at intervals well-
mounted heads of boar, elk, stag, roe-buck, and other game-beasts of a
northern forest, while in between were carved armorial escutcheons of the
principal cities of the lately expanded realm, Magdeburg, Manchester,
Hamburg, Bremen, Bristol, and so forth. Below these came shelves on
which stood a wonderful array of stone beer-mugs, each decorated with
some fantastic device or motto, and most of them pertaining individually
and sacredly to some regular and unfailing customer. In one particular
corner of the highest shelf, greatly at his ease and in nowise to be
disturbed, slept Wotan, the huge grey house-cat, dreaming doubtless of
certain nimble and audacious mice down in the cellar three floors below,
whose nimbleness and audacity were as precious to him as the forwardness
of the birds is to a skilled gun on a grouse moor. Once every day Wotan
came marching in stately fashion across the polished floor, halted mid-
way to resume an unfinished toilet operation, and then proceeded to pay
his leisurely respects to his friend von Kwarl. The latter was said to
be prouder of this daily demonstration of esteem than of his many coveted
orders of merit. Several of his friends and acquaintances shared with
him the distinction of having achieved the Black Eagle, but not one of
them had ever succeeded in obtaining the slightest recognition of their
existence from Wotan.

The daily greeting had been exchanged and the proud grey beast had
marched away to the music of a slumberous purr. The Kreuz Zeitung and
the Times underwent a final scrutiny and wer