n from a little shop near a girl
came out and walked quickly down the street. I yielded to the
temptation arising in a mind which had grown a darkness with slimy
things crawling in it. I kicked a hole in the frozen crust of the
heap, scraped out a handful of dirty snow, kneaded it into a snowball,
and sent it after the girl. It struck her on the back of the head. She
gave a cry and ran away, with her hand to her forehead. Brute that I
was, I actually laughed. I think I must have been nearer the devil
then than I have been since. At least I hope so. For you see it was
not with me as with worse-trained boys. I knew quite well that I was
doing wrong, and refused to think about it. I felt bad inside. Peter
might have done the same thing without being half as wicked as I
was. He did not feel the wickedness of that kind of thing as I did. He
would have laughed over it merrily. But the vile dregs of my wrath
with the Kelpie were fermenting in my bosom, and the horrid pleasure I
found in annoying an innocent girl because the wicked Kelpie had made
me angry, could never have been expressed in a merry laugh like
Mason's. The fact is, I was more displeased with myself than with
anybody else, though I did not allow it, and would not take the
trouble to repent and do the right thing. If I had even said to wee
Davie that I was sorry, I do not think I should have done the other
wicked things that followed; for this was not all by any means. In a
little while Peter joined me. He laughed, of course, when I told him
how the girl had run like a frighted hare, but that was poor fun in
his eyes.

"Look here, Ranald," he said, holding out something like a piece of
wood.

"What is it, Peter?" I asked.

"It's the stalk of a cabbage," he answered. "I've scooped out the
inside and filled it with tow. We'll set fire to one end, and blow the
smoke through the keyhole."

"Whose keyhole, Peter?"

"An old witch's that I know of. She'll be in such a rage! It'll be fun
to hear her cursing and swearing. We'd serve the same to every house
in the row, but that would be more than we could get off with. Come
along. Here's a rope to tie her door with first."

I followed him, not without inward misgivings, which I kept down as
well as I could. I argued with myself, "_I_ am not doing it; I am only
going with Peter: what business is that of anybody's so long as I
don't touch the thing myself?" Only a few minutes more, and I was
helping Peter to tie th