ere toads and snakes crawl, and but little of the
light of day filters through the heavily mullioned windows. You will be
loaded with chains. Now don't begin again, Baby, there's nothing to
cry about; straw will be your pallet; beside you the gaoler will set a
ewer--a ewer is only a jug, stupid; it won't eat you--a ewer with water;
and a mouldering crust will be your food.'

But Albert-next-door never enters into the spirit of a thing. He mumbled
something about tea-time.

Now Oswald, though stern, is always just, and besides we were all rather
hungry, and tea was ready. So we had it at once, Albert-next-door and
all--and we gave him what was left of the four-pound jar of apricot jam
we got with the money Noel got for his poetry. And we saved our crusts
for the prisoner.

Albert-next-door was very tiresome. Nobody could have had a nicer prison
than he had. We fenced him into a corner with the old wire nursery
fender and all the chairs, instead of putting him in the coal-cellar
as we had first intended. And when he said the dog-chains were cold the
girls were kind enough to warm his fetters thoroughly at the fire before
we put them on him.

We got the straw cases of some bottles of wine someone sent Father
one Christmas--it is some years ago, but the cases are quite good. We
unpacked them very carefully and pulled them to pieces and scattered
the straw about. It made a lovely straw pallet, and took ever so long to
make--but Albert-next-door has yet to learn what gratitude really is.
We got the bread trencher for the wooden platter where the prisoner's
crusts were put--they were not mouldy, but we could not wait till they
got so, and for the ewer we got the toilet jug out of the spare-room
where nobody ever sleeps. And even then Albert-next-door couldn't be
happy like the rest of us. He howled and cried and tried to get out, and
he knocked the ewer over and stamped on the mouldering crusts. Luckily
there was no water in the ewer because we had forgotten it, only dust
and spiders. So we tied him up with the clothes-line from the back
kitchen, and we had to hurry up, which was a pity for him. We might have
had him rescued by a devoted page if he hadn't been so tiresome. In fact
Noel was actually dressing up for the page when Albert-next-door kicked
over the prison ewer.

We got a sheet of paper out of an old exercise-book, and we made H. O.
prick his own thumb, because he is our little brother and it is our duty
to te