ee, although he was not
without fears. The boy Brownies had climbed atop the Black Pebble, and
crowded and capered upon it until they were like to shake it from the
bank, and send it arolling into the Assembly.

"Serve 'em right, the little plagues," snarled Spite, "if the old rock
did get loose, and break all their necks in the avalanche. Only, that
would make a gap in my burrow, and--well, it isn't pleasant to think of
the consequences."

Moreover, MacWhirlie and the restless youngsters who were mounted on the
herbage that grew above and around the Pixie's cave, were continually
tramping over the moss around the door, rocking to and fro on the
overhanging heather sprays till the roots fairly shook, and scrambling
up and down the little slope and over the flap itself. No wonder that
Spite's heart seemed to jump into his throat occasionally.

However, the door of the cave was so cunningly disguised and fitted into
the bank, that Spite was not discovered. He was well satisfied, for all
that, when the meeting was dismissed and the last of the Brownies
disappeared. He pushed open the flap, peeped out, then crawled slowly
into the light, crept down the slope and entered the vacant meeting
place. He was hungry; the labors and excitement through which he had
passed had quite exhausted him. He therefore crouched behind a toadstool
stem, and, after waiting patiently a while, sprang upon and devoured a
hapless fly and beetle that chanced to straggle that way. Then he wiped
his jaws with his hairy claw, rubbed his cheeks and head quite in the
fashion of pussy washing her face,[I] stretched a few silken threads
from the stem to the ground, and turned away.

"There," he said, "I leave those few lines to show that I have been
here, and that Spite the Spy is sharper than all the Brownies. Now for
home! King Cobweb will be interested in what I have to tell. As for
Parson Wille and his Brownies, perhaps they shall not escape us quite so
readily."

Spite gained great applause by this adventure, and when it was resolved
to send out to the New World some one to watch the motions of Parson
Wille, and do all the harm possible to his kind Brownie guardians, who
but Spite the Spy should be chosen? "You need take but few companions,"
said King Cobweb; "there are plenty of our folk in that country. I shall
send a letter with you to my cousin, King Cobweaver, and you can muster
a goodly company in America."

[Illustration: FIG. 15.--"Havi