sed it all from
her bedroom window."

"Well, I never!" broke in the chorus, with variations.

"The interesting part of it is about the seventh pullet, the one that
didn't get killed," resumed Blenkinthrope, slowly lighting a cigarette.
His diffidence had left him, and he was beginning to realise how safe and
easy depravity can seem once one has the courage to begin. "The six dead
birds were Minorcas; the seventh was a Houdan with a mop of feathers all
over its eyes. It could hardly see the snake at all, so of course it
wasn't mesmerised like the others. It just could see something wriggling
on the ground, and went for it and pecked it to death."

"Well, I'm blessed!" exclaimed the chorus.

In the course of the next few days Blenkinthrope discovered how little
the loss of one's self-respect affects one when one has gained the esteem
of the world. His story found its way into one of the poultry papers,
and was copied thence into a daily news-sheet as a matter of general
interest. A lady wrote from the North of Scotland recounting a similar
episode which she had witnessed as occurring between a stoat and a blind
grouse. Somehow a lie seems so much less reprehensible when one can call
it a lee.

For awhile the adapter of the Seventh Pullet story enjoyed to the full
his altered standing as a person of consequence, one who had had some
share in the strange events of his times. Then he was thrust once again
into the cold grey background by the sudden blossoming into importance of
Smith-Paddon, a daily fellow-traveller, whose little girl had been
knocked down and nearly hurt by a car belonging to a musical-comedy
actress. The actress was not in the car at the time, but she was in
numerous photographs which appeared in the illustrated papers of Zoto
Dobreen inquiring after the well-being of Maisie, daughter of Edmund
Smith-Paddon, Esq. With this new human interest to absorb them the
travelling companions were almost rude when Blenkinthrope tried to
explain his contrivance for keeping vipers and peregrine falcons out of
his chicken-run.

Gorworth, to whom he unburdened himself in private, gave him the same
counsel as heretofore.

"Invent something."

"Yes, but what?"

The ready affirmative coupled with the question betrayed a significant
shifting of the ethical standpoint.

It was a few days later that Blenkinthrope revealed a chapter of family
history to the customary gathering in the railway carriage.

"