deep in water. Then there arose some awkwardness from the fact that the
Bishop wished to leave sooner than the leopard did, and as the latter was
ensconced in the midst of the former's personal possessions there was an
obvious difficulty in altering the order of departure. I pointed out to
the Bishop that a leopard's habits and tastes are not those of an otter,
and that it naturally preferred walking to wading; and that in any case a
meal of an entire goat, washed down with tub-water, justified a certain
amount of repose; if I had had guns fired to frighten the animal away, as
the Bishop suggested, it would probably merely have left the bedroom to
come into the already over-crowded drawing-room. Altogether it was
rather a relief when they both left. Now, perhaps, you can understand my
appreciation of a sleepy countryside where things don't happen."




THE PENANCE


Octavian Ruttle was one of those lively cheerful individuals on whom
amiability had set its unmistakable stamp, and, like most of his kind,
his soul's peace depended in large measure on the unstinted approval of
his fellows. In hunting to death a small tabby cat he had done a thing
of which he scarcely approved himself, and he was glad when the gardener
had hidden the body in its hastily dug grave under a lone oak-tree in the
meadow, the same tree that the hunted quarry had climbed as a last effort
towards safety. It had been a distasteful and seemingly ruthless deed,
but circumstances had demanded the doing of it. Octavian kept chickens;
at least he kept some of them; others vanished from his keeping, leaving
only a few bloodstained feathers to mark the manner of their going. The