he future," answered Bulloch. "For man is essentially provident and
sociable. Such is his character and it is impossible to imagine it apart
from a certain appropriation of things. Those penguins whom you see are
dividing the ground among themselves."

"Could they not divide it with less violence?" asked the aged man. "As
they fight they exchange invectives and threats. I do not distinguish
their words, but they are angry ones, judging from the tone."

"They are accusing one another of theft and encroachment," answered
Bulloch. "That is the general sense of their speech."

At that moment the holy Mael clasped his hands and sighed deeply.

"Do you see, my son," he exclaimed, "that madman who with his teeth is
biting the nose of the adversary he has overthrown and that other one
who is pounding a woman's head with a huge stone?"

"I see them," said Bulloch. "They are creating law; they are founding
property; they are establishing the principles of civilization, the
basis of society, and the foundations of the State."

"How is that?" asked old Mael.

"By setting bounds to their fields. That is the origin of all
government. Your penguins, O Master, are performing the most august
of functions. Throughout the ages their work will be consecrated by
lawyers, and magistrates will confirm it."

Whilst the monk, Bulloch, was pronouncing these words a big penguin with
a fair skin and red hair went down into the valley carrying a trunk of a
tree upon his shoulder. He went up to a little penguin who was watering
his vegetables in the heat of the sun, and shouted to him:

"Your field is mine!"

And having delivered himself of this stout utterance he brought down
his club on the head of the little penguin, who fell dead upon the field
that his own hands had tilled.

At this sight the holy Mael shuddered through his whole body and poured
forth a flood of tears.

And in a voice stifled by horror and fear he addressed this prayer to
heaven:

"O Lord, my God, O thou who didst receive young Abel's sacrifices, thou
who didst curse Cain, avenge, O Lord, this innocent penguin sacrificed
upon his own field and make the murderer feel the weight of thy arm.
Is there a more odious crime, is there a graver offence against thy
justice, O Lord, than this murder and this robbery?"

"Take care, father," said Bulloch gently, "that what you call murder and
robbery may not really be war and conquest, those sacred foundations
of empires, t