ired
the washing thereon.

But the pride of the garden was its dovecote, formed of a large
cider-barrel on a mast. The barrel was pierced with pigeon-holes,
and fitted with ledges on which the birds stood to preen themselves.
Mr Pinsent did not profess himself a fancier. His columbarium--a
mixed collection of fantails and rocketers--had come to him by a
side-wind of business, as offset against a bad debt; but it pleased
him to sit on his terrace and watch the pretty creatures as they
wheeled in flight over the harbour and among the masts of the
shipping. They cost him nothing to keep, for he had always plenty of
condemned pease on hand; and they multiplied in peace at the top of
their mast, which was too smooth for any cat to climb.

One summer's night, however, about midway in the term of his
mayoralty, Mr Pinsent was awakened from slumber by a strange sound of
fluttering. It came through the open window from the garden, and
almost as he sat up in bed and rubbed his eyes it warned him that
something serious was amiss with his dovecote. He flung off the
bed-clothes and made a leap for the window.

The night was warm and windless, with a waning moon in the east, and
as yet no tremble of the dawn below it. Around the foot of the
dovecote the turf lay in blackest shadow; but a moon-ray overtopping
the low ridge of Mr Garraway's back premises (Mr Pinsent's next-door
neighbour on the left), illuminated the eastern side of the barrel,
the projecting platform on which it rested, and a yard or more of the
mast, from its summit down--or, to be accurate, it shed a pale
radiance on a youthful figure, clinging there by its legs, and upon a
hand and arm reaching over the platform to rob the roost.

'You infernal young thief!' shouted Mr Pinsent.

As his voice broke upon the night across the silent garden, the hand
paused suddenly in the act of dragging forth a pigeon which it had
gripped by the neck. The bird, almost as suddenly set free, flapped
across the platform, found its wings and scuffled away in flight.
The thief--Mr Pinsent had been unable to detect his features-slid
down the mast into darkness, and the darkness, a moment later, became
populous with whispering voices and the sound of feet stealing away
towards the yet deeper shadow of Mr Garraway's wall.

'Who goes there?' challenged Mr Pinsent again. 'Villains! Robbers!
You just wait till I come down to you! I've a gun here, by George!
and if you don't sta