ou didn't try to bolt. Speak the truth, and I'll say no more.'

We said we had.

Then he laid the fox on the table, spreading out the petticoat under it,
and he took out a knife and the girls hid their faces. Even Oswald did
not care to look. Wounds in battle are all very well, but it's different
to see a dead fox cut into with a knife.

Next moment the magistrate wiped something on his handkerchief and then
laid it on the table, and put one of my cartridges beside it. It was the
bullet that had killed the fox.

'Look here!' he said. And it was too true. The bullets were the same.

A thrill of despair ran through Oswald. He knows now how a hero feels
when he is innocently accused of a crime and the judge is putting on the
black cap, and the evidence is convulsive and all human aid is despaired
of.

'I can't help it,' he said, 'we didn't kill it, and that's all there is
to it.'

The white-whiskered magistrate may have been master of the fox-hounds,
but he was not master of his temper, which is more important, I should
think, than a lot of beastly dogs.

He said several words which Oswald would never repeat, much less in
his own conversing, and besides that he called us 'obstinate little
beggars'.

Then suddenly Albert's uncle entered in the midst of a silence freighted
with despairing reflections. The M.F.H. got up and told his tale: it was
mainly lies, or, to be more polite, it was hardly any of it true, though
I supposed he believed it.

'I am very sorry, sir' said Albert's uncle, looking at the bullets.

'You'll excuse my asking for the children's version?'

'Oh, certainly, sir, certainly,' fuming, the fox-hound magistrate
replied.

Then Albert's uncle said, 'Now Oswald, I know I can trust you to speak
the exact truth.'

So Oswald did.

Then the white-whiskered fox-master laid the bullets before Albert's
uncle, and I felt this would be a trial to his faith far worse than the
rack or the thumb-screw in the days of the Armada.

And then Denny came in. He looked at the fox on the table.

'You found it, then?' he said.

The M.F.H. would have spoken but Albert's uncle said, 'One moment,
Denny; you've seen this fox before?'

'Rather,' said Denny; 'I--'

But Albert's uncle said, 'Take time. Think before you speak and say
the exact truth. No, don't whisper to Oswald. This boy,' he said to
the injured fox-master, 'has been with me since seven this morning. His
tale, whatever it is, will be independen