he's such a delicate little chap.'

Lord Tottenham stopped, and he said, 'You should have thought of that
before.' Noel was howling all the time, and his face was very white, and
Alice said--

'Oh, do let Noel go, dear, good, kind Lord Tottenham; he'll faint if you
don't, I know he will, he does sometimes. Oh, I wish we'd never done it!
Dora said it was wrong.'

'Dora displayed considerable common sense,' said Lord Tottenham, and he
let Noel go. And Alice put her arm round Noel and tried to cheer him up,
but he was all trembly, and as white as paper.

Then Lord Tottenham said--

'Will you give me your word of honour not to try to escape?'

So we said we would.

'Then follow me,' he said, and led the way to a bench. We all followed,
and Pincher too, with his tail between his legs--he knew something was
wrong. Then Lord Tottenham sat down, and he made Oswald and Dicky and
H. O. stand in front of him, but he let Alice and Noel sit down. And he
said--

'You set your dog on me, and you tried to make me believe you were
saving me from it. And you would have taken my half-sovereign. Such
conduct is most--No--you shall tell me what it is, sir, and speak the
truth.'

So I had to say it was most ungentlemanly, but I said I hadn't been
going to take the half-sovereign.

'Then what did you do it for?' he asked. 'The truth, mind.'

So I said, 'I see now it was very silly, and Dora said it was wrong,
but it didn't seem so till we did it. We wanted to restore the fallen
fortunes of our house, and in the books if you rescue an old gentleman
from deadly peril, he brings you up as his own son--or if you prefer
to be your father's son, he starts you in business, so that you end in
wealthy affluence; and there wasn't any deadly peril, so we made Pincher
into one--and so--' I was so ashamed I couldn't go on, for it did seem
an awfully mean thing. Lord Tottenham said--

'A very nice way to make your fortune--by deceit and trickery. I have a
horror of dogs. If I'd been a weak man the shock might have killed me.
What do you think of yourselves, eh?'

We were all crying except Oswald, and the others say he was; and Lord
Tottenham went on--'Well, well, I see you're sorry. Let this be a lesson
to you; and we'll say no more about it. I'm an old man now, but I was
young once.'

Then Alice slid along the bench close to him, and put her hand on his
arm: her fingers were pink through the holes in her woolly gloves, and
said, 'I thi