oy; "but I wish you had liked my songs."

Presently, when he had come a little way out of the town, he put his
hand in his wallet and drew out the magistrate's certificate and tore
it in two; and then he took out the gold pieces and threw them into
the ditch, and they were not half as bright as the buttercups. But
when he came to the ringlet he smiled at it and put it back.

"Yet she was as bad as the rest of them," he thought with a sigh.

And he went across the world with his songs.

And Who Shall Say----?

It was a dull November day, and the windows were heavily
curtained, so that the room was very dark. In front of the fire was a
large arm-chair, which shut whatever light there might be from the
two children, a boy of eleven and a girl about two years younger, who
sat on the floor at the back of the room. The boy was the better
looking, but the girl had the better face. They were both gazing at
the arm-chair with the utmost excitement.

"It's all right. He's asleep," said the boy.

"Oh, do be careful! you'll wake him," whispered the girl.

"Are you afraid?"

"No, why should I be afraid of my father, stupid?"

"I tell you he's not father any more. He's a murderer," the boy said
hotly. "He told me, I tell you. He said, `I have killed your
mother, Ray,' and I went and looked, and mother was all red. I simply
shouted, and she wouldn't answer. That means she's dead. His hand was
all red, too."

"Was it paint?"

"No, of course it wasn't paint. It was blood. And then he came down
here and went to sleep."

"Poor father, so tired."

"He's not poor father, he's not father at all; he's a murderer, and
it is very wicked of you to call him father," said the boy.

"Father," muttered the girl rebelliously.

"You know the sixth commandment says `Thou shalt do no murder,' and
he has done murder; so he'll go to hell. And you'll go to hell too if
you call him father. It's all in the Bible."

The boy ended vaguely, but the little girl was quite overcome by the
thought of her badness.

"Oh, I am wicked!" she cried. "And I do so want to go to heaven."

She had a stout and materialistic belief in it as a place of sheeted
angels and harps, where it was easy to be good.

"You must do as I tell you, then," he said. "Because I know. I've
learnt all about it at school."

"And you never told me," said she reproachfully.

"Ah, there's lots of things I know," he replied, nodding his head.

"What must we do?" sa