ficently dirty ditch.

At first he yielded to the seductions of the ditch. He caught a big,
sleepy beetle and put it on a violet leaf, and sent it sailing out to
sea; and when it landed on the farther shore he found a still bigger
leaf, and sent it forth on a voyage in another direction, with a cargo
of daisy petals, and a hairy caterpillar for a bo'sun's mate. But, just
as the vessel was getting under way, a butterfly of amazing brilliance
floated past insolently under his very nose. Leaving the beetle and the
caterpillar to navigate the currents as best they could, he at once gave
chase. Cap in hand, he flew after the butterfly down the lane, and a
dozen times when his cap was just upon it, it sailed away sideways
without the least effort and escaped him.

Then, suddenly, the lane took a familiar turning; the ditch stopped
abruptly; the hedge on his right fell away altogether; the butterfly
danced out of sight into a field, and Jimbo found himself face to face
with the one thing in the whole world that could, at that time, fill him
with abject terror--the Empty House.

He came to a full stop in the middle of the road and stared up at the
windows. He realised for the first time that he was alone, and that it
was possible for brilliant sunshine, even on a cloudless day, to become
somehow lustreless and dull. The walls showed a deep red in the sunset
light. The house was still as the grave. His feet were rooted to the
ground, and it seemed as if he could not move a single muscle; and as he
stood there, the blood ebbing quickly from his heart, the words of the
governess a few days before rushed back into his mind, and turned his
fear into a dreadful, all-possessing horror. In another minute the
battered door would slowly open and the horrible Inmate come out to
seize him. Already there was a sound of something moving within, and as
he gazed, fascinated with terror, a shuddering movement ran over the ivy
leaves hanging down from the roof. Then they parted in the middle, and
something--he could not in his agony see what--flew out with a whirring
sound into his face, and then vanished over his shoulder towards the
fields.

Jimbo did not pause a single second to find out what it was, or to
reflect that any ordinary thrush would have made just the same sound.
The shock it gave to his heart immediately loosened the muscles of his
little legs, and he ran for his very life. But before he actually began
to run he gave one pier