beautiful
picture--the little mite with her father's merry eyes and her mother's
rosebud mouth, sitting on the torturer's knee, her golden hair mingling
with his beard. And how her silvery laugh brightened the place as she
played her favourite game of stretching her rag doll on a toy model of a
rack.

The sound of rain outside brought the torturer and his wife to the door.
As they stood side by side watching the downpour the last vestige of the
torturer's ill-humour passed away. This rain would mean a record year
for his cabbages, and would do wonders for his beans, which were already
a long way more forward than those of the executioner.

He realised now that he had allowed the mishaps of the day to worry him
unduly. After all, his hand had suffered little more than a scorch and
no longer pained him, and, although the censure he had received in the
Chamber and the possible consequences had been very disquieting, yet he
was now able to assure himself and his wife that if henceforth he kept
his assistant from wool-gathering all would be well.

Suddenly he fell back trembling from the threshold, his face blanched
with terror. A large rain-drop had splashed on his forehead, reminding
him abruptly that before coming home that evening he had neglected to
fill the water-dripping apparatus, which might be required at dawn for
the more obstinate of the heretics.

* * * * *

TALL TALK.

THE fact that the Bishop-Elect of PRETORIA, the Rev. NEVILLE TALBOT, is
no less than six feet six inches high, surpassing his predecessor by two
inches, has been freely commented on in the Press. Anxious to ascertain
from leaders of public opinion the true significance of the appointment,
Mr. Punch has been at pains to collect their views. How divergent and
even contradictory they are may be gathered from the following
selection:--

Sir MARTIN CONWAY, the Apostle of Altitude, as he has been recently
denominated, welcomed the appointment of Bishop TALBOT as a good omen
for the campaign which he is so ably conducting. "Nothing," he remarks,
"has impressed me so much in the works of TENNYSON as the line, 'We
needs must love the highest when we see it.' Mountain or building or
man, it is all the same. I never felt so happy in all my travels in
South America as when I was in Patagonia, the home of tall men and the
giant sloth. At all costs we should recognise and cultivate the human
skyscraper."

The Bishop of