same thing over again."

"He'll be transported, that's 'what if he did,'" interposed Mrs. Cattle.

"I suppose," said Miriam, "he wanted to get money out of the Insurance
Office. It was wrong, but he hasn't done much harm except to the
office, and they can afford it."

They were all still more amazed, and justly, for Miriam, amongst her
other peculiarities, did not comprehend how society necessarily
readjusts the natural scale of reward and punishment.

"'Pon--my--word," exclaimed Mrs. Cattle, after a long pause, slowly
dwelling on each syllable, "hasn't--done--much--harm; and for aught we
know, in a month, or at most six weeks, he'll be tried, and then after
that, in a fortnight, he may be on his way to Botany Bay. What do you
think, Mr. Tacchi?"

Giacomo did not occupy the same position as his daughter. His eyes
were screwed very nearly, although not quite, to the conventional
angle; but he loved her, and had too much sense not to see that she was
often right and Cowfold was wrong. Moreover, he enjoyed her antagonism
to the Cattles, of whose intellect he had not, as a clock and barometer
maker, a very high opinion. He evaded the difficulty.

"He hasn't been convicted yet."

"That's true," said Mr. Cattle, to whom, as an Englishman, the
principle of not passing sentence till both sides are heard was happily
familiar. It was a great thought with him, and he re-expressed it with
earnestness--"That's true enough."

But Miriam did not let them off. "I want to know if he is as bad as
those contractors that father was reading about in the newspaper last
week, who filled up the soldiers' boots between the soles with clay.
If they hadn't been found out, the poor soldiers would have gone
marching with those boots, and might have been out in the wet, and
might have died."

"Ah!" retorted Miss Cattle, "that's all very well; but that isn't
arson."

Miss Cattle was not quite so absurd as she seemed. The contractors'
crime was not catalogued with an ugly name. It was fraud or breach of
contract, and that of course made all the difference.

Miriam did not notice her antagonist's argument, but proceeded
musingly--"He was never unkind. He was very good to that old woman,
his aunt."

"Unkind!" Mrs. Cattle almost screamed, her harsh grating voice
contrasting most unpleasantly with the low, indistinct, mellow tones in
which Miriam had uttered the last two or three words. "Unkind! What's
that in a man as is a g