to be left together there
came, apparently from the uttermost ends of the earth, a pin, and the
other child and the pin were soon in violent and lamentable conjunction.

So he grew.

"Be hanged if I know what to do with him," said his father as he
rebuckled on his belt. "The devil's self hasn't got the shape or match
of such an imp in all the length and breadth of his seven hells. I'm
sick, sore and sorry whacking him, so I am, and before long I'll be
hung on the head of him. I'm saying that there's more deceit and
devilment in his bit of a carcass than there is in a public-house full
of tinkers, so there is."

He turned to his wife--

"It's no credit at all the son you've bore me, ma'am, but a sorrow and
a woe that'll be killing us in our old age and maybe damning our souls
at the heel of it. Where he got his blackguardly ways from I'm not
saying, but it wasn't from my side of the house anyway, so it wasn't,
and that's a moral. Get out of my sight you sniffling lout, and if
ever I catch you at your practices again I'll lam you till you won't be
able to wink without help, so I will."

"Musha," sobbed his wife, "don't be always talking out of you. Any one
would think that it was an old, criminal thief you were instructing,
instead of a bit of a child that'll be growing out of his wildness in
no time. Come across to me, child, come over to your mother, my lamb."

That night, when his father got into bed, he prodded his foot against
something under the sheets. Investigation discovered a brown paper bag
at the end of the bed. A further search revealed a wasp's nest, inside
of which there was an hundred angry wasps blazing for combat. His
father left the room with more expedition than decency. He did not
stop to put on as much as his hat. He fled to the stream which ran
through the meadow at the back of their house, and lay down in it, and
in two seconds there was more bad language than water in the stream.
Every time he lifted his head for air the wasps flew at him with their
tails curled. They kept him there for half an hour, and in that time
he laid in the seeds of more rheumatism than could be cured in two
lifetimes.

When he returned home he found his wife lying on the floor with a
blanket wrapped about her head, groaning by instinct, for she was
senseless.

Her face had disappeared. There was nothing where it had been but
poisoned lumps. A few days later it was found that she was blind of
one eye, and there