was right about the
fish," he said. "I dreamed about it last night."

"Rot!" said Jimmy; "dreams are only made-up things; they don't mean
anything."

George crept away sadly. How could he convince such a man? All day
long he worried over the problem, and he woke up in the middle of the
night with it throbbing in his brain. And suddenly, as he lay in his
bed, doubt came to him. Supposing he had been wrong, supposing he had
never seen the fish at all? This was not to be borne. He crept quietly
out of the flat, and tiptoed upstairs to the roof. The stone was very
cold to his feet.

There were so many things in the tank that at first, George could not
see the fish, but at last he saw it gleaming below the moon and the
stars, larger and even more beautiful than he had said. "I knew I
was right," he whispered, as he crept back to bed. In the morning he
was very ill.

Meanwhile blue day succeeded blue day, and while the water grew lower
in the tank, the children, with Jimmy for leader, had almost forgotten
the boy who had told them stories. Now and again one or other of them
would say that George was very, very ill, and then they would go on
with their game. No one looked in the tank now that they knew there
was nothing in it, till it occurred one day to Jimmy that the dry
weather should have brought final confirmation of his scepticism.
Leaving his comrades at the long jump, he went to George's neglected
corner and peeped into the tank. Sure enough it was almost dry, and,
he nearly shouted with surprise, in the shallow pool of sooty water
there lay a large fish, dead, but still gleaming with rainbow colours.

Jimmy was strong and stupid, but not ill-natured, and, recalling
George's illness, it occurred to him that it would be a decent thing
to go and tell him he was right. He ran downstairs and knocked on the
door of the flat where George lived. George's big sister opened
it, but the boy was too excited to see that her eyes were wet. "Oh,
miss," he said breathlessly, "tell George he was right about the fish.
I've seen it myself!"

"Georgy's dead," said the girl.

The Great Man

To the people who do not write it must seem odd that men and women
should be willing to sacrifice their lives in the endeavour to
find new arrangements and combinations of words with which to
express old thoughts and older emotions, yet that is not an unfair
statement of the task of the literary artist. Words--symbols that
represent