odged in their
pear-tree--showed it me this morning, with the red ink on it what
spelled your names out.'

Oswald, only pausing to wring the hand of his preserver, tore home on
the wings of the wind to tell the others.

I don't think we were ever so glad of anything in our lives. It is a
frightfully blighting thing when you believe yourself to be an
Arsenicator (or whatever it is) of the deepest dye.

As soon as we could think of anything but our own cleanness from guilt,
we began to fear the worst of Tom Simkins, the farmer at Crown Ovenden.
But _he_ came out of it, like us, without a stain on his fair name,
because he and his sister and his man Honeysett all swore that he had
given a tramp leave to sleep up against the beanstack the night before
the fire, and the tramp's pipe and matches were found there. So he got
his insurance money; but the tramp escaped.

But when we told father all about it, he said he wished he had been a
director of that fire insurance company.

We never made another fire-balloon. Though it was not us that time, it
might have been. And we know now but too well the anxieties of a life of
crime.

THE ENCHANCERIED HOUSE

A STORY ABOUT THE BASTABLES

The adventure which I am about to relate was a very long time ago, and
it was nobody's fault. The part of it that was most like a real crime
was caused by H. O. not being at that date old enough to know
better--and this was nobody's fault--though we took care that but a
brief half-hour elapsed between the discovery of his acts and his
_being_ old enough to know better, and knowing it, too (better, I mean),
quite thoroughly. We were residing at the residence of an old nurse of
father's while Dora was engaged in the unagreeable pastime of having
something catching at home. If she had been with us most likely none of
this would have happened. For she has an almost unerring nose for right
and wrong. Or perhaps what the author means is that she never does the
kind of thing that grown-ups don't like your doing. Father's old nurse
was very jolly to us, and did not bother too much, except about wet
feet and being late for meals, and not airing your shirt before you put
it on. But it is part of the nature of the nicest grown-ups to bother
about these little things, and we must not be hard on them for it, for
no one can help their natures.

The part where old nurse's house was was where London begins to leave
off being London, but before it c