he stage where every fact laid
before him must be backed up with an adequate reason. What does a bad
Sultan do, he wished to know. Harrington was puzzled. It seemed a pity
to bring Bob into touch with the cruelties and pains of life. But on the
other hand here was a chance to inoculate Bob at a very early age with
a hatred for tyranny and oppression, and a love for the principles of
representative government; and on the whole I am inclined to think
Harrington did right. In any case Harrington told the boy that the bad
Sultan was in the habit of sending his soldiers to shoot people, and
burn down their homes, and take away everything they had to eat, and put
all the women into jail. He hesitated over the children. It was out of
the question to tell Bob how, by order of the bad Sultan, little
children were ripped open before their mothers' eyes, or had their
brains dashed out against the walls. The little children, Harrington
finally told Bob, were whipped by the bad Sultan's bad soldiers, and had
all their toys confiscated.

But that apparently was not enough. Bob wanted to know what else the bad
Sultan did to the little children. What else? Harrington's criminal
imagination had exhausted itself. He didn't know, and he called upon Bob
for suggestions.

"He gives them medicine," said Bob, "and sprays their throats with
peroxide, and they cry." Was there any after-thought in that remark,
Harrington wondered. Could it be that he had only succeeded in arousing
in that active young mind the recognition of a certain family
resemblance between himself and Abdul the Damned? For that matter, was
it fair to the late Commander of the Faithful to charge his name with a
crime he was probably innocent of? But then again, if that particular
crime was necessary to the lesson borne in on Bob, why hesitate? So
Harrington ponders a moment and decides; yes, even to that level of
iniquity had Abdul Hamid II sunk. The atomiser was one of the
instruments of torture he made use of. And when the bad Sultan is
finally checked in his nefarious career, and dragged off to prison,
where he gets nothing but hard bread to eat and filthy water to drink,
Bob retains the impression that all this came about because the Young
Turks grew tired of having their throats washed with peroxide solutions.

"When I see the bad Sultan," says Bob, "I will punch him, like this,"
and his fist, shooting out and up, knocks the pipe from Harrington's
mouth.

"But aren