y tabby as it sat sunning itself on the well-curb, and bowled it
in. Naturally, I hadn't meant to hit it; the beast stepped forward just
as I fired. I nearly fell in, myself, trying to get it out, but the well
was deep and I couldn't raise a meow or a whisker. It was a fine
November Sunday, I remember, and while I was busy the family drove into
the yard, home from church. I bolted. No one saw me go, but by and by I
began to remember all the yarns I ever had heard about people getting
typhoid fever from polluted well-water, and to imagine that entire
household dying on my hands. Remorse with a capital R! I felt like
Cesare Borgia and Madame de Brinvilliers and the Veiled Mokanna all
rolled into one. When I couldn't stand it any longer, I sneaked into
Flavia's room at two o'clock in the morning, for counsel."

"She gave it?"

"She gave it. You can always count on Flavia. I can see her now, sitting
up in bed with her hair braided in two big yellow plaits and her
troubled kiddie countenance turned to me.

"'You will have to tell either papa or those people,' she decided, wise
as a toy owl. 'And if you tell them, _they_ will surely tell papa, so
perhaps you would rather tell him yourself. But I am sorry, dear
darling.'

"So I 'fessed up, after breakfast."

"What happened?" Gerard questioned.

"We drove over to the farm together, and father went in for a private
interview with old man Goodwin. After which he, father, escorted me
around to the well and informed me that I was to drink a cup of that
water. Phew, I would rather have drunk hemlock! I wasn't much given to
begging off when I got into trouble, but I tried that time, all right.

"'It's what you've left these folks to drink,' said he, standing with
his hands in his pockets, looking at me. 'It would have been a lot more
pleasant for you to swallow if you had owned up two days ago; just keep
that as a reminder never to put off a thing you ought to do. Take your
medicine, Corwin B.'

"I took it. But it almost killed me." He shook his blond head
disgustedly. "I told him I would probably die of typhoid, or something
worse. He said we would chance it."

"Still, it was a chance, Corrie."

Corrie calmly fastened the last button of his raincoat.

"No, I guess not. You see, old Goodwin had told father that they pulled
pussy out of the well ten minutes after I ran away, the first day. She
was clinging to the bucket, pretty wet, but healthy and merry. Father
told me