s down through Finland into Russia.

Feeling like one who squirts on a burning haystack with a garden syringe,
Felix propounded this scheme to his little daughter. She received it
with a start, a silence, a sort of quivering all over, as of an animal
who scents danger. She wanted to know when, and being told--'not before
the middle of August', relapsed into her preoccupation as if nothing had
been said. Felix noted on the hall table one afternoon a letter in her
handwriting, addressed to a Worcester newspaper, and remarked thereafter
that she began to receive this journal daily, obviously with a view to
reports of the coming assizes. Once he tried to break through into her
confidence. It was August Bank Holiday, and they had gone out on to the
heath together to see the people wonderfully assembled. Coming back
across the burnt-up grass, strewn with paper bags, banana peel, and the
cores of apples, he hooked his hand into her arm.

"What is to be done with a child that goes about all day thinking and
thinking and not telling anybody what she is thinking?"

She smiled round at him and answered:

"I know, Dad. She IS a pig, isn't she?"

This comparison with an animal of proverbial stubbornness was not
encouraging. Then his hand was squeezed to her side and he heard her
murmur:

"I wonder if all daughters are such beasts!"

He understood well that she had meant: 'There is only one thing I
want--one thing I mean to have--one thing in the world for me now!'

And he said soberly:

"We can't expect anything else."

"Oh, Daddy!" she answered, but nothing more.

Only four days later she came to his study with a letter, and a face so
flushed and troubled that he dropped his pen and got up in alarm.

"Read this, Dad! It's impossible! It's not true! It's terrible! Oh!
What am I to do?"

The letter ran thus, in a straight, boyish handwriting:

"ROYAL CHARLES HOSTEL,

"WORCESTER, Aug. 7th.
"MY NEDDA,

"I have just seen Bob tried. They have given him three years' penal. It
was awful to sit there and watch him. He can never stand it. It was
awful to watch him looking at ME. It's no good. I'm going to give myself
up. I must do it. I've got everything ready; they'll have to believe me
and squash his sentence. You see, but for me it would never have been
done. It's a matter of honour. I can't let him suffer any more. This
isn't impulse. I've been meaning to do it for some time, if they found
him gu