into your hen-run yesterday morning and killed six out of
seven pullets, first mesmerising them with its eyes and then biting them
as they stood helpless. The seventh pullet was one of that French sort,
with feathers all over its eyes, so it escaped the mesmeric snare, and
just flew at what it could see of the snake and pecked it to pieces."

"Thank you," said Blenkinthrope stiffly; "it's a very clever invention.
If such a thing had really happened in my poultry-run I admit I should
have been proud and interested to tell people about it. But I'd rather
stick to fact, even if it is plain fact." All the same his mind dwelt
wistfully on the story of the Seventh Pullet. He could picture himself
telling it in the train amid the absorbed interest of his
fellow-passengers. Unconsciously all sorts of little details and
improvements began to suggest themselves.

Wistfulness was still his dominant mood when he took his seat in the
railway carriage the next morning. Opposite him sat Stevenham, who had
attained to a recognised brevet of importance through the fact of an
uncle having dropped dead in the act of voting at a Parliamentary
election. That had happened three years ago, but Stevenham was still
deferred to on all questions of home and foreign politics.

"Hullo, how's the giant mushroom, or whatever it was?" was all the notice
Blenkinthrope got from his fellow travellers.

Young Duckby, whom he mildly disliked, speedily monopolised the general
attention by an account of a domestic bereavement.

"Had four young pigeons carried off last night by a whacking big rat. Oh,
a monster he must have been; you could tell by the size of the hole he
made breaking into the loft."

No moderate-sized rat ever seemed to carry out any predatory operations
in these regions; they were all enormous in their enormity.

"Pretty hard lines that," continued Duckby, seeing that he had secured
the attention and respect of the company; "four squeakers carried off at
one swoop. You'd find it rather hard to match that in the way of
unlooked-for bad luck."

"I had six pullets out of a pen of seven killed by a snake yesterday
afternoon," said Blenkinthrope, in a voice which he hardly recognised as
his own.

"By a snake?" came in excited chorus.

"It fascinated them with its deadly, glittering eyes, one after the
other, and struck them down while they stood helpless. A bedridden
neighbour, who wasn't able to call for assistance, witnes