blooming in an arid waste; it would probably have been difficult
to find a market-gardener who would have offered ten shillings for
their entire yearly produce. In a forgotten corner, however,
almost hidden behind a dismal shrubbery, was a disused tool-shed
of respectable proportions, and within its walls Conradin found a
haven, something that took on the varying aspects of a playroom
and a cathedral. He had peopled it with a legion of familiar
phantoms, evoked partly from fragments of history and partly from
his own brain, but it also boasted two inmates of flesh and blood.
In one corner lived a ragged-plumaged Houdan hen, on which the boy
lavished an affection that had scarcely another outlet. Further
back in the gloom stood a large hutch, divided into two
compartments, one of which was fronted with close iron bars. This
was the abode of a large polecat-ferret, which a friendly butcher-
boy had once smuggled, cage and all, into its present quarters, in
exchange for a long-secreted hoard of small silver. Conradin was
dreadfully afraid of the lithe, sharp-fanged beast, but it was his
most treasured possession. Its very presence in the tool-shed was
a secret and fearful joy, to be kept scrupulously from the
knowledge of the Woman, as he privately dubbed his cousin. And
one day, out of Heaven knows what material, he spun the beast a
wonderful name, and from that moment it grew into a god and a
religion. The Woman indulged in religion once a week at a church
near by, and took Conradin with her, but to him the church service
was an alien rite in the House of Rimmon. Every Thursday, in the
dim and musty silence of the tool-shed, he worshipped with mystic
and elaborate ceremonial before the wooden hutch where dwelt
Sredni Vashtar, the great ferret. Red flowers in their season and
scarlet berries in the winter-time were offered at his shrine, for
he was a god who laid some special stress on the fierce impatient