shot was the
same gentleman who had discharged him because the horse fell down. Now
all this happened through the flint, and as I told you, Bevis dear,
about the elm, the danger with such things is that they will wait so
long to do mischief.

"This flint, you see, waited so many years that nobody could count them,
till the waggon came to fetch it. They are never tired of waiting. Be
very careful, Bevis dear, how you climb up a tree, or how you put your
head out of window, for there is a thing that is always lying in wait,
and will pull you down in a minute, if you do not take care. It has been
waiting there to make something fall ever since the beginning of the
world, long before your house was built, dear, or before any of the
trees grew. You cannot see it, but it is there, as you may prove by
putting your cap out of window, which in a second will begin to fall
down, as you would if you were tilted out.

"And I daresay you have seen people swimming, which is a very pleasant
thing, I hear from the wild ducks; but all the time the water is lying
in wait, and if they stop swimming a minute they will be drowned, and
although a man very soon gets tired of swimming, the water never gets
tired of waiting, but is always ready to drown him.

"Also, it is the same with your candle, Bevis dear, and this the bat
told me, for he once saw it happen, looking in at a window as he flew
by, and he shrieked as loud as he could, but his voice is so very shrill
that it is not everybody can hear him, and all his efforts were in vain.
For a lady had gone to sleep in bed and left her candle burning on the
dressing-table, just where she had left it fifty times before, and found
it burnt down to the socket in the morning, and no harm done. But that
night she had had a new pair of gloves, which were wrapped up in a piece
of paper, and she undid these gloves and left the piece of paper
underneath the candlestick, and yet it would not have hurt had the
candle been put up properly, but instead of that a match had been stuck
in at the side, like a wedge, to keep it up. When the flame came down to
the match the match caught fire, and when it had burnt a little way
down, that piece fell off, and dropped on the paper in which the gloves
had been wrapped. The paper being very thin was alight in an instant,
and from the paper the flame travelled to some gauze things hung on the
looking-glass, and from that to the window curtains, and from the window