rickety roof would certainly not have borne Octavian's weight if he had
attempted to follow his daughter and her captors on their new vantage
ground.

"What are you going to do with her?" he panted. There was no mistaking
the grim trend of mischief in those flushed by sternly composed young
faces.

"Hang her in chains over a slow fire," said one of the boys. Evidently
they had been reading English history.

"Frow her down the pigs will d'vour her, every bit 'cept the palms of her
hands," said the other boy. It was also evident that they had studied
Biblical history.

The last proposal was the one which most alarmed Octavian, since it might
be carried into effect at a moment's notice; there had been cases, he
remembered, of pigs eating babies.

"You surely wouldn't treat my poor little Olivia in that way?" he
pleaded.

"You killed our little cat," came in stern reminder from three throats.

"I'm sorry I did," said Octavian, and if there is a standard measurement
in truths Octavian's statement was assuredly a large nine.

"We shall be very sorry when we've killed Olivia," said the girl, "but we
can't be sorry till we've done it."

The inexorable child-logic rose like an unyielding rampart before
Octavian's scared pleadings. Before he could think of any fresh line of
appeal his energies were called out in another direction. Olivia had
slid off the roof and fallen with a soft, unctuous splash into a morass
of muck and decaying straw. Octavian scrambled hastily over the pigsty
wall to her rescue, and at once found himself in a quagmire that engulfed
his feet. Olivia, after the first shock of surprise at her sudden drop
through the air, had been mildly pleased at finding herself in close and
unstinted contact with the sticky element that oozed around her, but as
she began to sink gently into the bed of slime a feeling dawned on her
that she was not after all very happy, and she began to cry in the
tentative fashion of the normally good child. Octavian, battling with
the quagmire, which seemed to have learned the rare art of giving way at
all points without yielding an inch, saw his daughter slowly disappearing
in the engulfing slush, her smeared face further distorted with the
contortions of whimpering wonder, while from their perch on the pigsty
roof the three children looked down with the cold unpitying detachment of
the Parcae Sisters.

"I can't reach her in time," gasped Octavian, "she'll be choked in