g to cry and say he did not want to play any more, it was
found that we had forgotten to bring any dinner. So we had to eat some
of our stock--the jam, the biscuits, and the cucumber.

"I feel a new man," said Alice, draining the last of the ginger-beer
bottles. "At that homely village on the brow of yonder hill we shall
sell all that remains of the stock, and go home with money in both
pockets."

But our luck had changed. As so often happens, our hearts beat high with
hopeful thoughts, and we felt jollier than we had done all day. Merry
laughter and snatches of musical song re-echoed from our cart, and from
round it as we went up the hill. All Nature was smiling and gay. There
was nothing sinister in the look of the trees or the road--or anything.

Dogs are said to have inside instincts that warn them of intending
perils, but Pincher was not a bit instinctive that day somehow. He
sported gaily up and down the hedge-banks after pretending rats, and
once he was so excited that I believe he was playing at weasels and
stoats. But of course there was really no trace of these savage denizens
of the jungle. It was just Pincher's varied imagination.

We got to the village, and with joyful expectations we knocked at the
first door we came to.

Alice had spread out a few choice treasures--needles, pins, tape, a
photograph-frame, and the butter, rather soft by now, and the last of
the tin-openers--on a basket-lid, like the fish-man does with herrings
and whitings and plums and apples (you cannot sell fish in the country
unless you sell fruit too. The author does not know why this is).

The sun was shining, the sky was blue. There was no sign at all of the
intending thunderbolt, not even when the door was opened. This was done
by a woman.

She just looked at our basket-lid of things any one might have been
proud to buy, and smiled. I saw her do it. Then she turned her
traitorous head and called "Jim!" into the cottage.

A sleepy grunt rewarded her.

"Jim, I say!" she repeated. "Come here directly minute."

Next moment Jim appeared. He was Jim to her because she was his wife, I
suppose, but to us he was the Police, with his hair ruffled--from his
hateful sofa-cushions, no doubt--and his tunic unbuttoned.

"What's up?" he said in a husky voice, as if he had been dreaming that
he had a cold. "Can't a chap have a minute to himself to read the paper
in?"

"You told me to," said the woman. "You said if any folks come to th