on chocolate and whipped cream and lemonade and
tartar sandwiches, and sent them home, expansive and beaming, but
without any appetite for dinner.

I dwell thus at length upon our triumph, in order to create in you a
happy frame of mind, before passing to the higeous calamity that so
nearly wrecked the occasion.

"Now follows the dim horror of my tale,
And I feel I'm growing gradually pale,
For, even at this day,
Though its smell has passed away,
When I venture to remember it, I quail!"

You never heard of our little Tammas Kehoe, did you? I simply haven't
featured Tammas because he requires so much ink and time and vocabulary.
He's a spirited lad, and he follows his dad, a mighty hunter of
old--that sounds like more Bab Ballads, but it isn't; I made it up as I
went along.

We can't break Tammas of his inherited predatory instincts. He shoots
the chickens with bows and arrows and lassoes the pigs and plays
bull-fight with the cows--and oh, is very destructive! But his crowning
villainy occurred an hour before the trustees' meeting, when we wanted
to be so clean and sweet and engaging.

It seems that he had stolen the rat trap from the oat bin, and had set
it up in the wood lot, and yesterday morning was so fortunate as to
catch a fine big skunk.

Singapore was the first to report the discovery. He returned to the
house and rolled on the rugs in a frenzy of remorse over his part of the
business. While our attention was occupied with Sing, Tammas was busily
skinning his prey in the seclusion of the woodshed. He buttoned the pelt
inside his jacket, conveyed it by a devious route through the length
of this building, and concealed it under his bed where he thought it
wouldn't be found.

Then he went--per schedule--to the basement to help freeze the ice-cream
for our guests. You notice that we omitted ice-cream from the menu.

In the short time that remained we created all the counter-irritation
that was possible. Noah (negro furnace man) started smudge fires at
intervals about the grounds. Cook waved a shovelful of burning coffee
through the house. Betsy sprinkled the corridors with ammonia. Miss
Snaith daintily treated the rugs with violet water. I sent an emergency
call to the doctor who came and mixed a gigantic solution of chlorid
of lime. But still, above and beneath and through every other odor, the
unlaid ghost of Tammas's victim cried for vengeance.

The first busine