Classic Audiobook Collection - Actions And Reactions by Rudyard Kipling ~ Full Audiobook [adventure]

Episode Date: August 15, 2023

Actions And Reactions by Rudyard Kipling audiobook. Genre: adventure Rudyard Kipling's Actions And Reactions is a wide-ranging collection of stories in which private choices collide with public forces - empire, technology, class, and the stubborn pull of the past. From English countryside homes shadowed by old histories to far-flung outposts where duty and survival test the limits of loyalty, Kipling follows soldiers, engineers, travelers, and ordinary men and women caught in moments when a single decision sets larger consequences in motion. The collection moves between grounded realism and imaginative speculation, pairing intimate dramas of marriage, inheritance, and belonging with tales that look forward to new machines and new kinds of conflict. Across these different settings, Kipling returns to recurring questions: what do people owe to tradition, to family, and to the systems that employ them? How do communities respond when change arrives - slowly through custom, or suddenly through disaster? Written with sharp observation, brisk narrative energy, and a keen ear for professional life and social ritual, these stories invite listeners to watch cause and effect unfold, sometimes quietly and sometimes with explosive force. For ad-free listening try our premium subscription Chapters (Approximate) (00:00:00) Chapter 01 (01:12:36) Chapter 02 (01:14:00) Chapter 03 (01:49:38) Chapter 04 (01:51:26) Chapter 05 (02:29:59) Chapter 06 (02:32:26) Chapter 07 (03:49:08) Chapter 08 (03:53:32) Chapter 09 (04:27:07) Chapter 10 (04:28:43) Chapter 11 (04:56:23) Chapter 12 (04:58:13) Chapter 13 (05:43:14) Chapter 14 (05:46:34) Chapter 15 (06:36:00) Chapter 16 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Actions and reactions by Rudyard Kipling, an habitation enforced. My friend, if cause doth rest thee, ere folly hath much oppressed thee, far from acquaintance guess thee, where a country may digest thee. Thank God that so hath blessed thee, and sit down, Robin, and rest thee. Thomas Tusser. It came without warning, at the very hour his hand was outstretched to crumble the whole. halts and gunsberg combine. The New York doctors called it overwork,

and he lay in a darkened room, one ankle crossed above the other, tongue pressed into pallid, wondering whether the next brain surge of prickly fires would drive his soul from all anchorages. At last they gave judgment. With care he might in two years return to the arena, but for the present he must go across the water

and do not work whatever. He accepted the terms. it was capitulation but the combine that had shivered beneath his knife gave him all the honors of war gunsburg himself full of condolences came to the steamer and filled the chappin's suit of cabins with overwhelming flower-works smileax said george chopin when he saw them fitz is right i'm dead only i don't see why he left out the immemorial on the ribbons nonsense his wife answered and poured him his tincture he'll be back before he can think he looked at himself in the mirror surprised that his face had not been branded by the health of the past three months the noise of the decks worried him and he lay down his tongue only a little pressed against his palate an hour later he said sophy i feel sorry about taking you away from everything like this i-i suppose we're the two loneliest people on god's earth to-night said sophy his wife and kissed him isn't it something to you that we're going together they drifted about europe for months sometimes alone sometimes with chan smet gipsies of their own land from the north cape to the blue grotto at capri they wondered because the next steamer headed that way or because some summer's had set them on the road. The doctors had warned Sophie that Chapin was not to take interest

even in other men's interests, but a familiar sensation at the back of the neck after one hour's keen talk with a now-heimed railway magnate saved here any trouble. He nearly wept. And I'm over thirty, he said, with all I meant to do. Let's call it a honeymoon, said Sophie. Do you know, in all the six years we've been married, you've never told me what you meant to do with your life. With my life, what's the use? It's finished now. Sophie looked up quickly from the Bay of Naples. As far as my business goes, I shall have to live on my rents, like that architect at San Moritz. You'll get better if you don't worry, and even if it takes time, there are worse things than... How much have you?

between four and five million but it isn't the money you know it isn't it's the principal how could you respect me you never did the first year after we married till i went to work like the others our tradition and up-bringing are against it we can't accept those ideals "'Well, I suppose I married you for some sort of ideal,' she answered, and they returned to their forty-third hotel. In England, they missed the alien tongues of continental streets that reminded them of their own polyglot cities. In England, all men spoke one tongue, speciously like American to the ear, but on cross-examination, unintelligible. "'Ah, but you have not seen England,' said a lady with iron-gray hair. They had met her in Vienna, Bayreuth, and Florence, and were grateful to find her again at Claridge's, for she commanded situations and knew where prescriptions are most carefully made up. You ought to take an interest in the home of our ancestors, as I do.

I've tried for a week, Mrs. Shantz, said Sophie, but I never get any further than tipping German waiters. These are not the true types, Mrs. Shantz went on. I know where you should go. Chopin pricked up his ears, anxious to run anywhere from the streets on which quick man, something of his kidney, did the business denied to him. "'We hear and we obey, Mrs. Shontz,' said Sophie, filling his unrest as he drank the loathed British tea. Mrs. Shont smiled and took them in hand. She rode widely and telegraphed far on their behalf. Till, armed with her letter of introduction, she drove them into that wilderness which is reached from an ash barrel of a station called Charity. cross, the way to go to Rockets, the farm of one cloak, in the southern counties, where she assured them they would meet the genuine England of folklore and song. Rockets they found after some hours,

four miles from a station, and so far as they could judge in the bumpy darkness, twice as many from a road. Trees, kind, and the outlines of Barnes showed shadowy about them when they alighted, and Mr. and Mrs. Cloak at the open door of a deep stone-floored kitchen made them shyly welcome. They lay in an attic beneath a wavy, whitewashed ceiling, and because it rained, a woodfire was made in an iron basket on a brick hearth, and they fell asleep to the chirping of mice and the whimper of flames. When they walked, it was a fair day, full of the noises of birds, the smell of bogs, lavender, and fried bacon mixed with an elemental smell they had never made. before. This, said Sophie, nearly pushing out the thin casement in an attempt to see round the corner,

is, what did the heck cabman say to the railway porter about my trunk, quite on the top? No, a little bit of all right. I feel further away from anywhere than I've ever felt in my life. We must find out where the telegraph office is. Who cares, said Sophie, wondering about, hairbrush in hand, to admire the illustrated weekly pictures, paces on the door and cupboard. But there was no rest for the alien's fall, till he had made sure of the telegraph office. He asked the cloak's daughter, laying breakfast, while Sophie plunged her face in the lavender bush outside the low window.

Go to the stella top of the barnfield, said Mary, and look across pardons to the next spire. It's directly under, you can't miss it. Not if you keep to the footpath. My sister's the telegraphist there, but during the... the three-mile radius, sir. The boy delivers telegrams directly to this door from Parton's village. One has to take a good deal on trust in this country, he murmured. Sophie looked at the close turf, scarred only with last night's wheels, at two rats,

which wound round a rickyard, and at the circle of steel orchard about the half-timbered house. What's the matter with it, she said. Telegrams delivered to the veil of Avalon, of course, and she beckoned in an earnest-eyed hound of engaging manners and no engagements who answered at times to the name of Rumbler. He led them, after breakfast, to the rise behind the house where the stile stood against the skyline, and, I wonder what we shall find now, said Sophie, frankly prancing with joy on the grass. It was a slope of gap-haged fields possessed to their centres by clumps of brambles. Gates were not, and the rabid-mind, cattle-wrapped posts leaned out and in,

A narrow path doubled among the bushes, scores of white tails twinkled before the racing hound, and a hawk rose whistling shrilly. No roads, no nothing, said Sophie, her short skirt hooked by briars. I thought all England was a garden. There's your spire, George, across the valley. How curious! They walked toward it through an all-abandoned land. Here they found the ghost of a patch of Lucerne that had refused.

to die. There, a harsh fallow, surrendered to yard-high thistles, and here a breath of rampant kelk, feigning to be a loathal crop. In the ungraced pastures, swathes of dead staff caught their feet, and the ground beneath glistened with sweat. At the bottom of the valley a little brook had undermined its footbridge, and frothed in the wreckage. But there stood great woods on the slopes beyond, old, tall and brilliant, like unfated tapestries against the walls of a ruined house. All this within a hundred miles of London, he said. Looks as if it had had nervous prostration, too. The footpath turned the shoulder of the slope, through a thicket of wrang rhodododendrons,

and crossed what had once been a carriage drive, which ended in the shadow of two gigantic holmokes. "'A house,' said Sophie in a whisper. A colonial house! Behind the blue-green of the twin trees rose a dark-blue brick Georgian pile with a shell-shaped fun light over its billared door. The hound had gone off on his own foolish quests.

Except for some stir in the branches and the fright of four startled magpies, there was neither life nor sound about the square house, but it looked out of its long windows most friendly. Charmed to meet you, I'm sure, said Sophie, and curts it to the ground. george this is history i can understand we began here she curts it again the june sunshine twinkled on all the lights it was as though an old lady wise in three generations experience but for the present sitting out bent to listen to her flushed and eager grandchild i must look sophy tiptoed to a window and shaded her eyes with her hand oh these rooms half full of cotton bales wool i suppose

"'But I can see a bit of the mantelpiece, George, do come.' "'Isn't that someone?' She fell back behind her husband. The front door opened slowly to show the hound, his nose wide with milk, in charge of an ancient of days, clad in a blue-lilion ephod, curiously gathered, and breasts and shoulders. "'Certainly,' said George half aloud. "'Father time himself.

"'This is where he lives, Sophie.' "'We came,' said Sophie weakly. "'Can we see the house?' I'm afraid that's our dog. No, she's Rumbler, said the old man. He's been at my swale again. Stang at Rockets, Bee-Y? Come in. Ah, you're on a gate.

The hound broke from him, and he tortured after him down the drive. They entered the hall. Just such a high-light hall as such a house should own. A slim, balustered staircase, wide and shallow, and one screaming white, climbed out of it under a long oval window. On either side, delicately molded doors gave on to wool-lumbered rooms, whose sea-green mantel-pices were adorned with nymphs, scrolls and cupids in low relief. What's the firm that makes these things? cried Sophie in ruptured.

Oh, I forgot. This must be the originals. Adams, is it? I never dreamed of anything like that still-cut fender. Does he mean us to go everywhere? He's catching the dog, said George, looking out. We don't count. They explored the first, or ground floor, delighted as children playing burglars. This is like all England, she said at last.

Wonderful, but no explanation. You're expected to know it beforehand. Now, let's try upstairs. The stairs never creaked beneath their feet. From the broad landing, they entered a long green panel. room lighted by three full-length windows which overlooked the forlorn wreck of a terraced garden and wooded slopes beyond the drawing-room of course sophie swam up and down it that mantel-piece orpheus and eurydice is the best of them all isn't it marvellous why the room seems furnished with nothing in it how's that george it's the proportions i've noticed it i saw a hepple-white couch once sophie said her finger to her flushed cheek and considered with two of them one on each side you wouldn't need anything else except there must be one perfect mirror over the mantelpiece look at that view it's a framed constable her husband cried no it's a morland a parody of a morland but about that couch george don't you think empire might be better than hepplewhite dull gold against the pale green it's a pity they don't make spinets now

days? I believe you can get them. Look at that oak wood behind the pines. While his sat and played to cut us stately at the clavichord, Sophie hummed and, head on one side, noted to where the perfect mirror should hang. Then they found bedrooms, with dressing rooms and powdering closets, and steps leading up and down boxes of rooms, round, square, and octagonal, with enriched ceilings and chased doorlocks.

Now about servants. Oh! She had darted up the last stairs to the checkered darkness of the top floor, where loose tiles lay among broken laths, and the walls were scrawled with names, sentiments, and hop records. They've been keeping pigeons here, she cried. And you could drive a buggy through the roof anywhere, said George. That's what I say.

The old man cried below them on the stairs. "'Not a dry place for my pigeons at all.' "'But why was it allowed to get like this?' said Sophie. "'Tis with housing as teeth,' he replied. "'Let him go too far, and there's nothing to be done. "'Time was they was minded to sell her, but none would buy. "'She was too far away along from any place. "'Time was they had lived here themselves,

"'but they took and died. "'Here?' "'Suffy moved beneath the light of a hole in the roof. "'Nah, none dies here except falling off ricks and such. "'In London they died.' "'He plucked a lock of wool from his blue smoke. "'There was no staple, neither the Elphix nor the moons. "'Shart and brittle all of them.

"'Dead they be seventeen year, for I've been here caretaking twenty-five. "'Who does all the wool belong to downstairs?' "'George asked. "'To the estate. "'I'll show you the back parts of your life.' You're from America, ain't you? I've had a son there once myself. They followed him down the main stairway.

He posed at the turn and swept one hand towards the wall. Planned a room here for your coffin to come down. Seven foot and three men at each end wouldn't brush the paint. If I die in my bed, they'll have to upend me like a milk gun. Tis or luck, do you see? He let them on and on through a maze of buck kitchens, dairies, larders and sculleries, that melted along covered ways into a farmhouse, visibly older than the main building, which again rumbled out among barns, buyers,

peak pens, stalls and stables to the dead fields behind. Somehow, said Sophie, sitting exhausted on an ancient well-carb, somehow one wouldn't insult these lovely old things by filling them with hay. George looked at long stone walls upholding reaches of silvery, oak weatherboarding, buttresses of mixed flint and bricks, outside stairs, stone upon archstone, curves of thatch were grass-sprouted, roundels of house-legged tiles, and a huge paved yard populated by two cows in the repentant rumbler. He had not thought of himself or of the telegraph office for two and a half hours. But why, said Sophie, as they went back through the crater of

streaking fields. Why is one expected to know everything in England? Why do they never tell? You mean about the Elphix and the moons? he answered. Yes, and the lawyers and the estate. Who are they? I wonder whether those painted floors in the green room were a real oak. Don't you like us exploring things together? Better than Pompeii? George turned once more to look at the view. Eight hundred acres go with a house, the old man told me. Five-farmes. Five-farmes. all together. Rockets is one of them. I like Mrs. Cloak, but what is the old house called? George laughed. That's one of the things you're expected to know. He never told me. The Cloaks were more communicative. That evening, and thereafter for a week,

they gave the Chapins the official history, as one gives it to lodgers of Friars Pardon, the house and its five farms. But Sophie asked so many questions, and George was so humanly interested, that, as confidence in the strangers grew, they launched, with observed and acquired detail, into the lives and deaths and doings of the Elphics and the moons, and their collaterals, the hailinges and the torals. It was a tale told serially by cloak in the barn or his wife in the dairy, the last chapter reserved for the kitchen or nights by the big fire,

when the two had been half the day exploring about the house, where old Eagleton of the blue smoke, cuckled and chuckled, to see them. The motives that swayed the characters were beyond their comprehension. The fates that shifted them were gods they had never met. The sidelines Mrs. Cloak threw, unacted an incident, were more amazing than anything in the record. Therefore the Chappins listened delightedly and blessed Mrs. Shont's. But why, why, why did so-and-so do so-and-so? Sophie would demand from her seat by the pot-hook, and Mrs. Cloak would answer, smoothing her knees, for the sake of the place.

I give it up, said George one night in their own room. People don't seem to mutter in this country compared to the places they live in. The way she tells it, friar's pardon, was a sort of moloch. Poor old thing! They had been walking round the farms as usual before tea. No wonder they loved it. Think of the sacrifices they made for it. Jane Elphick married the younger Torrell to keep it in the family,

The octagonal room with a molded ceiling next to the big bedroom was hers. Now what did he tell you while he was feeding the pigs? said Sophie. About the Toral cousins and the uncle who died in Java. They lived at Burnt House, behind High Parton's, where that brook is all blocked up. No, Burnhouse is under High Parton's wood before you come to Gal Anstey, Sophie corrected. Well, old man cloak said. Sophie threw open the door and called down in the door.

into the kitchen where the cloaks were covering the fire. Mrs. Cloak, isn't Burnhouse under high pardons? Yes, my dear, of course, the soft voice answered absently. A cough. I beg your pardon, madam? What was it you said? Never mind, I prefer it the other way. Sophie laughed and George retold the missing chapter as she sat on the bed. Here today and gone tomorrow, said Cloak, warningly.

They've paid their first month, but with only that Mrs. Sean's letter, for guarantee. None she said never cheated as yet. It slipped out before I thought. She's a most humane young lady. They'll be going away in a little. And you've talked a lot too, Alfred. Yes, but the Elphics are all dead.

No one can bring my loose talking home to me. But why do they stay on and stay on so? In due time, George and Sophie asked each other that question and put it aside. They argued that the climate, a fairly blend, unlike the hot and cold ferocities of their own native land, suited them as the thick stillness of the night certainly suited George. He was saved even the sight of a metal road, which, as presumably leading to business, wakes desire in a man, and the telegraph office at the village of Friar's Pardon, where they sold picture postcards and peck-tops, was two walking miles

across the fields and woods. For all that touched his past among his fellows, on their remembrance of him, he might have been in another planet, and Sophie, whose life had been very largely spent among husbandless wives of lofty ideals, had no wish to live this present of God. The unhurried meals, the foreknowledge of deliciously empty hours to follow, the breaths of soft sky under which they walked together

and reckoned time only by their hunger or thirst, the good grasp beneath their feet that cheated the miles, Their discoveries always together amid the farms, griffins, rockets, burnt house, Gail Unstey and the home farm, where Igledon of the blue smokefrock would waylay them, and they would ransack the old house once more, the long wet afternoons when they tacked up their feet on the bedroom's deep window-sill over against the apple-trees and tucked together as never till then had they found time to talk. These things contented her soul and her body throve.

"'Have you realized?' she asked one morning, "'that we've been here absolutely alone for the last 34 days.' "'Have you counted them?' he asked. "'Did you like them?' she replied. "'I must have. "'I didn't think about them. "'Yes, I have. "'Six months ago I should have fretted myself sick.

"'Remember it Cairo? "'I've only had two or three bad times. "'Am I getting better, or is it senile decay?' "'Climate. All climate.' sophy swank her new bought english boots as she sat on the style overlooking friar's pardon behind the cloaks his barn one must take hold of things though he said if it's only to keep one's hand in his eyes did not flicker now as they swept the empty fields mustn't one play out a morristown links over gale unsley i dare say you could hire it no i'm not as english as that nor as morristown clock says all the farms here could be made to pay well i'm anastasia in the treasurer frankard i'm content to be alive and purr there's no hurry no he smiled all the same i'm going to see after my mail you promise you wouldn't have any there's some business coming through that's amusing me, honest, he doesn't get on my nerves at all.

Want a secretary? No, thanks, old think, isn't that quite English? Too English. Go away! But nonetheless, in broad daylight, she returned the kiss. I'm off to pardons. I haven't been to the house for nearly a week. How have you decided to furnish Jane Olfick's bedroom?

He laughed, for it had come to be a permanent castle in Spain between them. Black-chainese furniture and yellow silk brocade, she understood. answered in run downhill. She scattered a few cows at a gap with a flourish of a ground-dash, that Eagledon had cut for her a week ago, and singing as she passed under the holmokes, sought the farmhouse at the back of Friar's pardon. The old man was not to be found, and she knocked at his half-open door, for she needed him to fill her idle forenoon. A blue-eyed sheep-dog, a new friend and Rumbler's old enemy, crawled out and besought her to enter. Eagleton sat in his chair by the fire, a thistle-spat between his knees, his head drooped.

Though she had never seen death before, her heart that missed a bit, told her that he was dead. She did not speak or cry, but stood outside the door and the dog licked her hand. When he threw up his nose, she heard herself saying, Don't howl, please don't begin to howl, Scotty, or I shall run away. She held her ground while the shadows in the rickyard moved toward noon, sat after a while, on the steps by the door, her arms round the dog's neck, waiting till someone should come. She watched the smokeless chimneys of Friar's Pardon,

slush its roofs with shadow, and the smoke of Igledon's last lighted fire gradually thin and seas. Against her will she fell to wondering how many moons, Elphix and Torrey, had been swung around the turn of the broad hole stairs. Then she remembered the old man's stock of being upended like a milk-gun and buried her face in Scotty's neck. At last, a horse's feet clinked upon flags, rustled in the old grey straw of the rickyard,

and she found herself facing the vicar, a figure she had seen at church declaiming impossibilities, Sophie was a Unitarian, in an unnatural voice. "'He's dead,' she said without preface. "'Old Eagleton? I was coming for a talk with him.' The vicar passed in uncovered. "'Ah!' she heard him say. "'Heard failure. How long have you been here?'

"'Since a quarter to eleven.' She looked at her watch earnestly and so that her hand did not shake. "'I'll sit with him now till the doctor comes. "'Do you think you could tell him, and, yes, Mrs. Betts in the cottage with a wisterian next, the blacksmiths? I'm afraid this has been rather a shock to you. Sophie nodded and fled toward the village. Her body failed her for a moment.

She dropped beneath a hedge and looked back at the great house. In some fashion, its silence and stolidity steadied her for her errand. Mrs. Beds, small, black-eyed and dark, was almost as unconcerned as friar's pardon. Yes, yes, of course, dear me. well, Eagledon, he had had his day in my father's time. Muriel, get me my little blue bag, please. Yes, ma'am, they come down like Ellen branches in still weather. No warning at all.

Muriel, my bicycle's behind the foul house. I'll tell Dr. Dallas, ma'am. She trundled off on her wheel like a brown bee, while Sophie, heaven above and earth beneath changed, walked stiffly home, to fall over George at his letters. in a model of laughter and tears. It's all quite natural for them, she gasped.

They come down like Ellen branches in still weather. Yes, ma'am. No, there wasn't anything in the least horrible, only, oh, George, that poor shiny stick of his between his poor thin knees. I couldn't have borne it if Scotty had howled. I didn't know the vicar was so sensitive. He said he was afraid it was rather a shock.

"'Mrs. Bess told me to go home, and I wanted to collapse on her floor, but I didn't disgrace myself. I—I couldn't have left him, could I?' "'You're sure you've taken no harm?' cried Mrs. Cloak, who had heard the news by farm telegraphy, which is older but swifter than Marconi's. "'No, I'm perfectly well,' Sophie protested. "'You lay down till tea-time,' Mrs. Cloak patted her shoulder. "'They'll be very pleased, though she has had no proper understanding for twenty years.' they came before twilight a black-bearded man in mole skins and a little palsied old woman who chiroped like a wren i'm his son said the man to sophia among the lavender bushes we had a difference twenty year back and didn't speak since but i'm his son all the same and we thank you for the watching i'm only glad i happened to be there she answered and from the bottom of her heart she meant it we heard he spoke a lot of you one time and another since you came, we thank you kindly, the man added.

Are you the son that was in America? she asked. Yes, ma'am. On my uncle's farm in Connecticut. He was what they call roadmaster there. Whereabouts in Connecticut? asked George over her shoulder. Bearingholler was the name. I was there six years with my uncle. How small the world is, Sophie cried. Why, all my mother's people come from Bearing Hollow. there must be some there still the lashmars did you ever hear of them i remember hearing that name seems to me he answered but his face was blank as the back of a spade a little before dusk a woman in gray striding like a foot-soldier and bearing on her arm a long pole crushed through the orchard calling for food george upon whom the unannounced english walked mysteriously fled to the parlour but mrs cloak came forward beaming "'Sophie could not escape.

"'We've only just heard of it,' said the stranger, turning on her. "'I've been out with the otter hounds all day. "'It was a splendidly sporting thing.' "'Did you kill?' said Sophie. "'She knew from books. "'She could not go far wrong here. "'Yes, a dry bitch, seventeen pounds,' was the answer. "'A splendidly sporting thing of you to do.

"'Poor old Iggledon.' "'Oh, that!' said Sophie enlightened. If there had been any people at pardons, it would never have happened. It had been looked after. But what can you expect from a parcel of London solicitors? Mrs. Cloke murmured something. No, I'm soaked from the knees down. If I hang about, I shall get chilled.

A cup of tea, Mrs. Cloak, and I can eat one of your sandwiches as I go. She wiped her weather-worn face with a green and yellow silk handkerchief. Yes, my lady, Mrs. Cloak ran and returned swiftly. Our land marches with pardons for a mile on the south, she explained, waving the full cup, but one has quite enough to do with one's own people without poaching. Still, if I'd known, I'd have sent Dora, of course. Have you seen her this afternoon, Mrs. Cloak? No.

I wonder whether that girl did sprain her uncle. Thank you. It was a formidable hang of bread and bacon that Mrs. Cloak presented. As I was saying, pardons is a scandal, letting people die like dogs. dogs. There ought to be people there who do their duty. You've done yours, though there wasn't the faintest call upon you. Good night. Tell Dora if she comes, I've gone on. She strode away, munching her crust, and Sophie reeled breathless into the parlor to shake the shaking George. Why did you keep catching my eye behind the blind? Why didn't you come out and do your duty?

Because I should have burst. Did you see the mud on its cheek? he said. Once, I didn't look again. Who is she? God, a local deity then. Anyway, she's another of the things you're expected to know by instinct. Mrs. Cloak, shocked at their levity, told them that it was Lady Conant, wife of Sir Walter Conant, baronet, a large land-holder in the neighbourhood, and, if not God, at least his visible providence. George made her talk of that family for an hour. Laughter, said Sophie afterward, in their own room, is the mark of the savage.

Why couldn't you control your emotions? It's all real to her. It's all real to me. That's my trouble, he answered in an altered tone. Anyway, it's real enough to mark time with. Don't you think so? What do you mean? She asked quickly, though she knew his voice.

That I'm better. I'm well enough to kick. What at? This? He waved his hand around the one room. I must have something to play with till I'm fit for work again. "'Oh!' she sat on the bed and leaned forward, her hands clasped. "'I wonder if it's good for you.'

"'We've been better here than anywhere,' he went on slowly. One could always sell it again. She nodded gravely, but her eyes sparkled. "'The only thing that worries me is what happened this morning. I want to know how you feel about it. If it's on your nerves in the list, we can have the old farm at the back of the house pulled down, or perhaps it has spoiled the notion for you? Pull it down, she cried.

You've no business, faculty? Why, that's where we could leave while we're putting the big house in order. It's almost under the same roof. No, what happened this morning seemed to be more of a... Of a leading than anything else. There ought to be people at pardons. Lady Conn's quite right. I was thinking more of the woods and the roads.

I could double the value of the place in six months. what do they want for it she shook her head and her loosened hair fell glowingly about her cheeks seventy-five thousand dollars they'll take sixty-eight less than have what we paid for our old yacht when we married and we didn't have a good time in her you were well i discovered i was too much of an american to be content to be a rich man's son you aren't blaming me for that oh no only it was a very business-like honeymoon how far are you along with the deal george i can mail the deposit on the purchase money to-morrow morning and we can have the thing completed in a fortnight or three weeks if you say so friar's pardon friar's pardon sophy chanted rapturously her dark grey eyes big with delight all the farms Gail Ansela, burnt house, rockets, the home farm and griffons, sure you've got them all? Sure, he smiled. On the woods, high pardons wood, lower pardons, satins, datans shaw, Rubens gill, Maxis Gill and both Fioch hungers, sure you've got them all? Every last stick. Why, you know them as well as I do,

he laughed. They say there's five thousand, a thousand pounds worth of lumber, timber, they call it, in the hungers alone. Mrs. Cloak's oven must be mended first thing, and the kitchen roof. I think I'll have all these whitewashed. Sophie broke in, pointing to the ceiling. The whole place is a scandal. Lady Conan is quite right. George, when did you begin to fall in love with the house?

In the green room, that first day, I did. I'm not in love with it. One must do something to mark time till one's fit for work. Or when we stood under the oaks and the door opened? Oh, ought I to go to poor egress. "'She sighed with utter happiness. "'Wouldn't they call it a liberty now?' said he. "'But I liked him.

"'But you didn't own him at the date of his death.' "'That wouldn't keep me away, only they made such a fuss about the watching.' "'She caught her breath. "'It might be ostentatious from that point of view, too, oh, George.' "'She reached for his hand. "'We're two little orphans moving in worlds not realized, "'and we shall make some bad breaks, "'but we're going to have the to have the two.

time of our lives. We'll run up to London tomorrow and see if we can hurry those English law solicitors. I want to get to work. They went. They suffered many things ere they returned across the fields in a fly one Saturday night, nursing a two by two and a half box of deeds and mobs, lawful owners of Friars Pardon and the five decade farms therewith. I do most sincerely open trust you'll be happy, madam, Mrs. Glock gasped when she was told the news, by the kitchen fire. Goodness, it isn't a marriage, Sophie exclaimed a little odd,

for to them the joke, which to an American means work, was only just beginning. If it stook in a proper spirit, Mrs. Cloke's eye turned toward her oven. Sand and have that mended tomorrow, Sophie whispered. We couldn't help noticing,

said Cloak slowly, from the times you walked there, that you and your lady was drawn to it, but I don't know as we ever precisely think. thought. His wife's glance checked him. That we were that sort of people, said George.

We aren't sure of it ourselves yet. Perhaps, said Cloak, robbing his knees, just for the sake of saying something, perhaps you'll park it? What's that? said George. Turn it all into a fine park like Violet Hill. He jerked a thumb to westward.

That Mr. Sangras bought. It was four farms, and Mr. Sangrus made a fine park of them, with a herd of fallen dear. Then it wouldn't be Friars' pardon, said Sophie, would it? I don't know, as I've ever heard, pardons, was ever anything but wheat and wool. Only some gentlemen say that parks are less trouble than tenants. He laughed nervously. But the gentry, of course, they keep on pretty much as they was used to. I see, said Sophie, how did Mr. Sangris make his money?

I never rightly heard. It was pepper and spices, or it may have been glott. no gloves was sir reginald lees at marley end spices was mr sangress he's a brazilian gentleman very sunburnt like be sure one thing you won't have any trouble said mrs cloak just before they went to bed now the news of the purchase was told to mr and mrs cloak alone at eight p m of a saturday none left the farm till they set out for church next morning yet when they reached the church and were about to sleep aside into their usual seats a little beyond the font, where they could see the red furtales of the red robes, woggle and twist at ringing time, they were swept forward irresistibly, a cloak on either flank, and yet they had not walked with the cloaks, upon the ever-retiring bosom of a black-gowned verger who ushered them into a room of a pew at the head of the left aisle under the pulpit.

This, he sighed reproachfully, is the pardon's pew, and shot them in. They could see little more than the choir-boys in the chancel. but to the roots of the hair of their necks they fell the congregation behind mercilessly devouring them by look when the wicked man turneth away the strong ellen voice of the priest vibrated under the hammer beam roof and a loneliness unfelt before swam'd their hearts as they searched for places in the unfamiliar church of england service the lord's prayer our father witchard set the seal on that desolation sophy found herself thinking how in other lands their purchase would long air these have been discussed from every point of view in a dozen prints, forgetting that George for months had not been allowed to glance at those black and bellowing headlines. Here was nothing but silence, not even hostility. The game was up to them. The other players hid their cards and waited. Suspense she felt was in the air, and when her sight cleared, she saw it.

indeed a mural tablet of a footless bird brooding upon the carven motto, Wait a while, wait a while. At the litany, George had trouble with an unstable hussock, and drew the slip of carpet under the pew seat. Sophie pushed her aunt back also, and shut her eyes against the burning that felt like tears. When she opened them, she was looking at her mother's maiden name, fairly carved, on a blue-flagged stone on the pew floor.

Ellen Lashmar died in 1796 at the age of 27. She nudged George and pointed. Sheltered as they kneeled. They looked for more knowledge, but the rest of the slab was blank. Ever hear of her? he whispered. Never knew any of us came from here. Coincidence? Perhaps. But it makes me feel better.

And she smiled and winked away a tear on her lashes and took his hand while they prayed for all women labouring of child, not in the perils of childbirth, and the sparrows, who had found their way through the guards behind the glass windows, chirped above the faded guilds and alabaster family tree of the conants. The baronet's pew was on the right of the aisle. After service its inhabitants moved forth without haste, but so was to block effectively a dusky person with a large family who chumped in the rear. spices i think said sophy deeply delighted as the sangress closed up after the conunds let them get away george but when they came out many fog whose eyes were one still lingered by the litch gate

i want to see if any more lachmers are buried here said sophy not now this seems to be show day come home quickly he replied a group of families the cloaks a little apart opened to let them through the men saluted with jerky nods the women with remnants of a courtesy only eagledon's son his mother on his arm lifted his hat as sophy passed your people said the clearer voice of lady conant in her ear i suppose so said sophy blushing for they were within two yards of her but it was not a question then that child looks as if it were coming down with mumps you ought to tell the mother she shouldn't have brought it to church i can't live a behind my lady the woman said. She'd set the house of fire in a minute. She's that forward with the matches. And you, moody dear. Has Dr. Dulles seen her?

Not yet, my lady. He must. You can't get away, of course. Hmm. My idiotic maid is coming in for her teeth tomorrow at twelve. She shall pick her up at Gail Anstey, isn't it? At eleven. Yes, thank you very much, my lady.

I oughtn't to have done it, said Lady Conant, apologetically, but there has been no one at pardons for so long that you'll forgive my poaching. Now, can't you lunch with us? The vicar usually comes too. I don't use the horses on a Sunday. She glanced at the Brazilian silver-plated chariot. It's only a mile across the fields. You—you're very kind, said Sophie, hating herself because her lip trembled. My dear, the compelling tone dropped to a soothing gurgle. Do you suppose I don't know how it feels to come to a strange county,

country, I should say, away from one's own people? When I first left the shires, I'm Shropshire, you know, I cried for a day and a night, but fretting doesn't make loneliness any better. Oh, here's Dora, she did sprain her leg that day.

I'm as lame as a tree still, said the tall maiden frankly. You ought to go out with the otter hounds, Mrs. Chapin, I believe they're drawing your water next week. Sir Walter had all right, ready led off George, and the vicar came up on the other side of Sophie. There was no escaping the swift procession or the leisurely lunch, where talk came and went in low-voiced studies that had the village

for their centre. Sophie heard the vicar and Sir Walter address her husband lightly as Chappin. She also remembered many women, known in a previous life, who habitually addressed her husband's as Mr. Sutton won. After lunch, Lady Conant talked to her explicitly of maternity, as that is achieved in cottages and farmhouses remote from aid, and of the duty thereto of the mistress of pardons. A gate in a beach hedge reached across triple lawns, let them out before tea-time into the unkept south side of the land. I want your hand, please, said Sophie as soon as they were safe among the beach bowls and the lowless hollies, do you remember the old maid in Providence and the guitar, who heard

the commissary swear and hardly reckoned herself a maiden-lady-lady-lady-lady, afterwards because I'm a relative of hers lady conant is did you find out anything about the lashmores he interrupted I didn't ask I'm going to write to on Sydney about it first oh lady conant said something at lunch about their having bought some land from some lashmores a few years ago I found it was at the beginning of lost century what did you say I said really how interesting like that I'm not going to push myself forward. I've been hearing about Mrs. Sancrus's effort in that direction, and you? I couldn't see you behind the flowers. Was it very deep-washers, dear?

George mopped a brow already browned by outdoor exposures. Oh, no, dead easy, he answered. I've bought friar's pardon to prevent Sir Walter's bird-strain. A cock-fasant scattered through the dry leaves and exploded almost under their feet. Sophie jumped. That's one of them, said George calmly. Well, your nerves are better at any rate, said she. Did you tell him you'd bought the thing to play with? No, that was where my nerve broke down. I only made one bad break, I think.

I said I couldn't see why hiring land to man to farm wasn't as much a business proposition as anything else. And what did they say? They smiled. I shall know what that smile means someday. They don't wait. their smiles. Do you see that truck by Galanste? They looked down from the edge of the hunger over a cup-like hollow. People by twos and threes in their Sunday best filed slowly along

the paths that connected farm to farm. I've never seen so many on our land before, said Sophie. Why is it? To show us we mustn't shut up their rights of way. Those cow tracks we've been using cross-lots? said Sophie forcibly. Yes, any one of them would cost us two thousand pounds each in legal expenses to close. But we don't want to, she said. The whole community would fight if we did. But it's our land. We can do what we like. It's not our land. We've only paid for it. We belong to eat and it belongs to the people. Our people, they call them. I've been to lunch with the English too. They pass slowly from one brackened dotted filled to the next, flushed with pride of ownership, plotting alterations and restorations at each

turn, halting in their trucks to argue, spreading apart to embrace two views at once, or closing in to consider one. Couples moved out of their way, but smiled in covertly. We shall make some bad breaks, he said at last. Together, though, you won't let anyone else in, will you? Except the contractors. The syndicate handles this proposition by its little loan. But you might feel the want of someone, she insisted. I shall, but it will be you. It's business, Sophie, but it's going to be good fun. Please, God, she answered, flushing and cried to herself as they went back to tea. It's worth it, oh, it's worth it.

The repairing and moving in the friar's pardon was business of the most varied and searching, but all done English fashion without friction. Time and money alone were asked. The rest lay in the hands of beneficent advisers from London, or spirits, male and female, called up by Mr. and Mrs. Cloke, from the wastes of their farms. In the centre stood George and Sophie, a little aghast, their interests reaching out on every side. "'I ain't saying anything against Londoners,' said Cloak. "'Cef appointed Clark of the Outer Works, consulting engineer, head of the Immigration Bureau,

and Superintendent of Woods and Forests. "'But your own people won't go about to make more than a fair profit out of you?' "'How is one to know?' said George. "'Five years from now, or so on, "'maybe you'll be looking over your first year's account, "'and, knowing what you'll know then, "'you'll say, well, Billy Beirtop, "'or old cloak as it might be,

"'did me proper when I was new. "'No man likes to have that sort of thing "'laid up against him.' "'I think I see,' said George, "'but five years is a long time to look ahead. "'I doubt if that oak, Billy Beirte-up, "'throdeat in Rubin's gill, will be fit for her drawing-room floor in less than seven.

Cloak drolled. Yes, that's my work, said Sophie. Billy Beard-up of Griffins, a woodman by training and birth, a tenant-farmer by misfortune of marriage, had laid his road axe at her feet a month before. Sorry if I've committed you to another eternity. And we shan't ever know where we've gone wrong with your new carriage drive before that time either,

said Cloke, ever anxious to keep the balance true, with an ounce or two in Sophie's favour. The past four months had taught George better than to reply. The carriage rode winding up the hill with his present keen interest. They set off to look at it, and the imported American scraper which had blighted the nun-to-s sunny soul of Skim Gwinch, the Carter. But young Eagleton was in charge now, and under his guidance, Buller and Roberts, the great horses, moved mountains.

You lift her like that, and you tip her. like that, he explained to the gang. My uncle, he was roadmaster in Connecticut. Are they roads yonder? said Scheme, sitting under the laurels. No better than accommodation roads. Dirt, they call them. They'd suit you, Skim. Why? said the incautious, Scheme.

Because you'd take no hurt when you fall out of your cart drunk on a Saturday, was the answer. I didn't last time, neither, Skim roared. After the loud laugh, old Wyburn of Gale Unste, piped feebly. Well, dirt or no dirt, there's no denying, Chappie knows a good job when he sees it. He don't build one day and destroy the next? Like that niggasangress? She's the one that knows her own mind, said Pinky, brother to skim-winch, and a Napoleon among Carters, who had helped to bring the grand piano across the fields in the autumn rains. She had owed to, said Eagledon. Whoa, Buller! She's a lashmar. They never was.

double-thinking. Whoa, you found that? Has the answer come from your uncle? said Skim, doubtful weather so remote a land as America had posts. The others look at him scornfully. Skim was always a day behind the fair. Eagled and rested from his labors. She's a lashma right enough.

I started up to write to my uncle at once, the month after she said her folks came from veering holler. Where there ain't any road? Skim interrupted, but none laughed. my uncle, he married an American woman for his second, and she took it up like a, like the coroner. She's a lashmer out of the old Lashmore place, for they sold to Conn's. She ain't no Toot Hill Lashmer, nor any of the Crayford lot. Her folk come out of the ground here, neither chalk nor forest, but wildishers.

They sailed over to America. I've got it all reached down by my uncle's woman in 1800 and nothing. My uncle says they're all slow begetters like, Would they be gentry yonder now? Scheme asked. Nah, there's no gentry in America. No matter how long you're there, it's against their law. There's only rich and poor allowed. They've been lawyers and such like over yonder for a hundred years.

But she's a lashmer for all that. Lord, what's a hundred years? said Wyburn, who had seen 78 of them. And they write too, from yonder. My uncle's woman writes, The chicken still tell them by a head mark. Their hairs foxy red still, And they throw out when they walk. He's in toad,

Treads like a gypsy, But you watch, and you'll see her throw out, like a colt. Your trays once taken up. Pinky's large ears had caught the sound of voices, And as the two broke through the laurels, The men were hard at work, their eyes on Sophie's feet. She had been less fortunate in her eyes, inquiries than Eagleton for her aunt Sidney of Meriden, a budged and certificated daughter of

the revolution to boot, answered her inquiries with a two-page discourse on patriotism, the leaflets of a village improvement society, of which she was president, and a demand for an overdue subscription to a factory girl's reading circle. Sophie burned it all in the Orpheus and Eurydiscite and kept her own counsel. What I want to know, said George, when spring was coming, and the gardens needed thought, is who will ever pay me for my labor? I've put in at least half a million dollars worth already. Sure, you're not taking too much out of yourself, his wife asked, oh no, I haven't been conscious of myself all winter. He looked at his brown English gaiters and smiled.

It's all behind me now. I believe I could sit down and think of all that, those months before we sailed. Don't, oh, don't, she cried. but I must go back one day. You don't want to keep me out of business always, or do you?' He ended with a nervous laugh. Sophie sighed as she drew her own ground ash, of old Eagleton's cutting from the whole rack. "'Aren't you overdoing it, too?

You look a little tired,' he said. "'You make me tired. I'm going to Rockets to see Mrs. Cloak about Mary. This was the sister of the telegraphist promoted to be sewing-made pardon. Coming?' I am due at a burnt house to see about the new well. By the way, there's a sore-throated Gail Anstey.

That's my province, don't interfere. The Wiberg children always have sore-throats. They do it for Jujubs. Keep away from Gail Anstey till I make sure, honey. Cloak ought to have told me. These people don't tell, haven't you learned that yet? But I'll obey, my lord. See you later.

She set off a foot, for within the three main roads that bounded the blunt triangle of the estate, even by night one could scarcely hear the cards on them, wills were not used except for farm work. The footpath served all other purposes, and, though at first they had planned improvements, they had soon fallen in with the customs of their hidden kingdom and moved about the soft-footed ways by woodland, hedgerow, and Shaw,

as freely as the rabbits. Indeed, for the most part, Sophie walked bare-headed, beneath her helmet of chestnut hair, but she had been plagued of late by vague toothaches, which she explained to Mrs. Cloak, who asked some questions. How it came about so he never knew, but after a while,

behold, Mrs. Cloak's arm was about her waist, and her head was on that deep bosom behind the shot kitchen door. My dear, my dear, the elder woman almost sobbed, and you mean to tell me you never suspicion? Why, why, where was you ever taught anything at all? Of course it is. It's what we've been only waiting for, all of us. Time and again I've said to Lady.

She checked herself, and now we shall be as we should be. But, but, but, Sophie whimpered, and to see you building your nest so busy, pianos and books, and never thinking of a nursery. No more I did. Sophie sat bolt up right and began to laugh.

Time enough yet. The fingers tapped thoughtfully on the broad knee, but they must be strange-minded fog over yonder with you. Have you thought to send for your mother? She dead? My dear, my dear, never mind. She'll be happy where she knows. It is God's work,

and we was only waiting for it, for you've never failed in your duty yet. It ain't your way. What did you say about my Mary's doings? Mrs. Cloak's face hardened as she pressed her chin on Sophie's forehead. If any of your girls thinks to behave arbitrary now, I'll— But they want, my dear. I'll see they do their duty, too. Be sure you'll have no trouble.

When Sophie walked back across the fields, having an earth changed about her as on the day of old Igleton's death. For an instant, she thought of the wide turn of the staircase and the new ivory white paint that no coffin corner could scar, but presently the shadow passed in a pure wonder and bewilderment that made her real. She leaned against one of their new gates and looked over their lands for some other stay.

Well, she said resignedly, half-aloud, we must try to make him feel that he isn't a third in our party and turned the corner that looked over Friar's pardon, giddy, sick and faint. Of a sudden the house they had bought for a whim stood up as she had never seen it before, low-fronted, broad-winged, ample, prepared by course of generations for all such things, as it had steadied her when it lay desolate, so now that it had meaning from their few months of life within, it soothed and promised good.

She went alone and quickly into the hall, and kissed either door-posed, whispering, "'Be good to me, you know, you've never failed in your duty yet.' when the matter was explained to george he would have sailed at once to their own land but this sophy forbade i don't want science she said i just want to be loved and there isn't time for that at home besides she added looking out of the window it would be desertion George was forced to soothe himself with linking friar pardon to the telegraph system of Great Britain by telephone, three quarters of a mile of poles, put in by Weyburn and a few friends. One of these was a foreigner from the next parish, said he when the line was being run, "'There's an old Illum right in our road. Shall I throw her?' "'Tooth Hill parish folk. Neither grace nor good luck. God help him!' Old Wyburn shouted the local proverb from three poles down the line,

We ain't going to lay any axe-iron to coffin wood here. Not still we know where we are yet a while. Swing round her, swing round. To this day then, that sudden kink in the straight line across the upper pasture remains a mystery to Sophie and George. Nor can they tell, wise Kim Winch, who came to his cottage under Dutton Shaw, most musically drunk at 10.45pm, of every Saturday night,

night, as his father had done before him, sung no more, at the bottom of the garden steps, where Sophie always feared he would break his neck. The path was undoubtedly an ancient right-of-way, and, at 10.45 p.m. on Saturdays, Skim remembered it was his duty to posterity to keep it open, till Mrs. Cloak spoke to him once. She spoke likewise to her daughter Mary, sawing maid at pardons, and to Mary's new friend, the five-foot-seven, imported London houseman. maid, who taught Mary to trim hats and found the county dullish. But there was no noise, at no time was there any noise, and when Sophie walked abroad, she met no one in her path unless she had signified a wish that way. Then they appeared to protest that all was well

with them and their children, their chickens, their roofs, their water supply, and their sons in the police or their railway service. But don't you find it dull, dear, said George, loyally doing his best not to worry as the months went by. I've been so busy putting my house in order, I haven't had time to think, said she. Do you? No, no. If I could only be sure of you.

She turned on the green drawing room's couch, it was Empire, not Hepelwhite after all, and laid aside a list of linen and blanket. It has changed everything, hasn't it? she whispered. Oh, Lord, yes. But I still think, if we went back to Baltimore, more and missed our first real summer together? No, thank you, my lord. But we're absolutely alone. Isn't that what I'm doing my best to remedy? Don't you worry, I like it. Like it to the

marrow of my little bones. You don't realize what her house means to a woman. We thought we were living in it last year, but we hadn't begun to. Don't you rejoice in your study, George? I prefer being here with you. He sat down on the floor by the couch. He sat down on the floor by the couch, took her hand. Seven, she said, as the French clock struck. Year before last, you'd just be coming back from business. He wins at the recollection, then laughed. Business.

I've been at work ten solid hours today. Where did you lunch? Were the conant? No, at Dutton Shore, sitting on a log with my feet in a swamp. But we found out where the old spring is, and we're going to pipe it down to Galan City next year. I'll come and see tomorrow. "'I will please open the door, dear.

"'I want to look down the passage. "'Isn't that corner by the stairhead lovely "'were the sun-strike scene?' "'She looked through half-closed eyes "'at the vista of ivory-white and pale green "'all steeped in liquid gold. "'There's a step out of Jane Elphick's bedroom,' she went on, "'and his first step in the world

"'out to be up. "'I shouldn't wonder if those people "'hadn't put it there on purpose. "'George, will it make any odds to you "'if he's a girl?' He answered, as he had many times before, that his interest was his wife, not the child. Then you're the only person who thinks so, she laughed. Don't be silly, dear. It's expected. I know. It's my duty. I shan't be able to look her people in the face if I fail.

What concern is it of theirs confound them? You'll see. Luckily, the tradition of the house is boys, Mrs. Cloke says, so I'm provided for. Shall you ever begin to understand these people? I shan't. And we bought it for fun, for fun, he groaned, and here we are held up for goodness knows how long. Why, were you thinking of selling it? He did not answer. Do you remember the second Mrs. Chapin? she demanded. This was a bold, brazen little black-browed woman, a widow for choice, who on Sophie's death was guilefully to marry George for his wealth and ruin him in a year.

George being busy, Sophie had invented her some two years. after her marriage, and conceived she was alone among wives in so doing. You aren't going to bring her up again, he asked anxiously. I only want to say that I should hate anyone who bought pardons ten times worse than I used to hate the second Mrs. Chapin. Think what we've put into it of our two souls. At least a couple of million dollars, I know I could have made, he broke off. The bists, she went on, that be sure to build a rule. red-brick lodge at the gates and cut the lawn up for bedding out.

You must leave instructions on your will that he is never to do that, George, won't you? He laughed and took her hand again, but said nothing till it was time to dress. Then he muttered, what the devil's use is a man's country to him when he can't do business in it. Pryor's pardon stood faithful to its tradition, as the appointed time was born, not that third in party to whom Sophie meant to be so kind, but a godling. In beauty it was manifest, excellent eras, as in wisdom Confucius, an enhancer of delights, a renewer of companionships, and an interpreter of destiny. This last, George did not realize till he met Lady Conant striding through Dutton Shaw a few days after the event. My dear fellow, she cried and slapped him heartily on the

back. I can't tell you how glad we all are. Oh, she'll be all right. There's never been any trouble over the birth of an heir at pardons. Now, where the juice is it? She felt largely in her leather-bound skirt and drew out a small silver mug. I sent a note to your wife about it, but my silly ass of a groom forgot to take this. You can save me a trump. Give her my love. She marched off amid her guard of grave Eardales. The mug was worn and dented. Above the twined initials, G.L. was the crest of a footless bird, and the motto,

Wait a while, wait a while. That's the other end of the riddle, Sophie whispered when he saw her that evening. Read her note. The English write beautiful notes. The warmest of welcomes to your little man. I hope he will appreciate his native land now he has come to it. Though you have said nothing, we cannot, of course, look on him as a little

stranger, and so I am sending him the old Lashmore christening mug. It has been with us since Gregory Lashma, your great-grandmother's brother, George stared at his wife. Go on, she twinkled from the pillows. Mother's brother sold his place to Walter's family. We seem to have acquired some of your household gods at that time, but nothing survives except the mother. and the old cradle, which I found in the potting shed, and am having put in order for you. I hope little George, Lashmer, he will be too, won't he, will live to see his grandchildren cut their teeth on his mag. Affectionately yours, Alice Conant.

P.S. How quiet you've kept about it all. Well, I'm— Don't swear, said Sophie, but for the infant mind. But how in the world did she get at it? Have you ever said a word about the lashmars? You know the only time to young Eagleton at Rockets when Eagledon died. Your great-grandmother's brother.

She traced the whole connection, more than your aunt Sidney could do. What does she mean about her keeping quiet? Sophie's eyes sparkled. I've thought that out too. We've got back at the English at last. Can't you see that she thought that we thought my mother's being a lashmour was one of those things would expect the English to find out for themselves, and that's impressed her? She turned the mug in her white hands and sighed happily.

Wait a while, wait a while. That's not a bad motto, George. It's been worth it. But still, I don't quite see. I shouldn't wonder if they don't think our coming here was part of a deep-laid scheme to be near our ancestors. They'd understand that, and look how they've accepted us all of them. Are we so undesirable in ourselves?

George grunted. Be just, me lord. That wretched sangress man has twice our money. Can you see Mark Conan slapping him between the shoulders? Not by a jack-full. The poor beast doesn't exist. Do you think it's that, then? He looked toward the cot by the fire, where the godling snorted.

The minute I get well, I shall find out from Mrs. Cloak what every lash-more gives in dolls. That's nicer than tips, every time a lash-meet is born. I've done my duty thus far, but there's much expected of me. Entered here Mrs. Cloak and hung worshipping over the cot. They showed her the mug and her face shone. Oh, now Lady Conan sent it, it'll be all proper ma'am, wanted. George, of course, he'd have to be, but seeing what he is, we was hoping,

all your people was hoping, it would be Lashma too, and that would just round it out. A very handsome mug, quite unique. I should imagine. Wait a while. Wait a while. That's true with the lushmers I've heard. Very slow to fill their houses they are. Most like Master George won't open his nursery till his thirty.

Poor lamb, cried Sophie. But how did you know my folk were lashmars? Mrs. Cloak thought deeply. I'm sure I can't quite say, ma'am, but I have a belief likely that it was something you may have let drop to young Igolden when you was at Rockets. that may have been what give us an inkling, and so it came out one thing in the way of talk leading to another, and those American people at veering holler was very obliging with news, I'm told, ma'am.

Great Scott, said George under his breath, and this is the simple peasant. Yes, Miss Cloak went on, and Cloak was only wandering this afternoon. Your pillows slipped, my dear, you mustn't lie that away, just for the sake of saying something, whether you wouldn't, think, well now, of getting the Lashmore Farms back, sir. They don't rightly round off Sir Walter's estate. They come catering across us more. Cloak, he would be glad to show you over any day. But Sir Walter doesn't want to sell, does he? We can find out from his bailiff, sir, but—with cold contempt, I think that trained nurse is just coming up from her dinner,

so I'm afraid we'll have to ask you, sir. Now, Master George, aye. Wait. A little minute, lami? A few months later, the three of them were down at the brook in the Gail Anstey Woods to consider the rebuilding of a footbridge carried away by spring floods. George Lashmore Chapin wanted all the blue bells on God's earth that day to eat, and Sophie adored him in a voice like to the cooing of a dove, so business was delayed. Here's the place, said his father at last among the water for Get Me Nots, but were the dues or the large poles, Cloak, I told you to have them down here already.

We'll get them down, if you say so, Cloak answered with the thrust of the underlip they both knew. But I did say so, what on earth have you brought that timber tag here for? We aren't building a railway bridge, why, in America, half a dozen two by four bits would be ample. I don't know nothing about that, said Cloak, and I've nothing to say against large. if you want to make a temporary job of it, I ain't here to tell you what isn't so, sir, and you can't say I ever come creeping up on you, or trying to lead you further in than you set out. A year ago, George would have danced with impatience. Now, he scraped a little mud off his old gaiters, with his spad and waited.

All I say is that you can put up large and make a temporary job of it, and by the time the young master's married, it'll have to be done again. now I've brought down a couple of as sweet six-by-eight oak timbers as I've ever drawed. You put a mina and it's off your mind for good and all. To other way, I don't say it ain't right, I'm only just saying what I think, but to other way, he'll no sooner be married than he'll have it all to do again. You've no call to regard my words, but you can't get out of that. No, said George after a pause. I've been realizing that for some. time. Make it Ogg then. We can't get out of it.

End of Section 1. Section 2 of Actions and Reactions. This is the Libervox recording. All Libervox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librevox.org. Recording by Chad Horner from Ballyclair, Northern Ireland. Actions and Reactions by Rudyard Kipling. Chapter 2 The Recall

i am the land of their fathers in me the virtuous days i will bring back my children after certain days under their feet in the grasses my clinging magic runs they shall return as strangers they shall remain as sons over their heads in the branches of their new-bought ancient trees i weave an incantation and draw them to my knees scent of smoke in the evening smell of rain in the night the hours the days and the sea-sons order the shoals aright till i make the meaning of all my thousand years till i fill their hearts with knowledge while i fill their eyes with tears End of Section 2, recording by Chad Horner from Ballyclare, Northern Ireland. Section 3 of Actions and Reactions. This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org.

Actions and Reactions by Rudyard Kipling. Garm, a hostage. one night a very long time ago i drove to an indian military cantonment called me on mir to see amateur theatricals at the back of the infantry barracks a soldier his cap over one eye rushed in front of the horses and shouted that he was a dangerous highway robber as a matter of fact he was a friend of mine so i told him to go home before any one caught him but he fell under the pole and i heard voices of a military guard in search of some one the driver and i coaxed him into the carriage drove home swiftly undressed him and put him to bed where he waked next morning with a sore headache very much ashamed when his uniform was cleaned and dried and he had been shaved and washed and made neat i drove him back to barracks with his arm in a fine white sling and reported that i had accidentally run over him i did not tell this story to my friend's sergeant who was a hostile and unbelieving person but to his lieutenant who did not know us quite so well three days later my friend came to call and at his heels slobbered and fond one of the finest bull terriers of the old-fashioned breed two parts bull and one terrier that i had ever set eyes on he was pure white with a fawn-colored saddle just behind his neck and a fawn dine

at the root of his thin whippy tail i had admired him distantly for more than a year and vixen my own fox-terrier knew him too but did not approve ease for you said my friend but he did not look as though he liked parting with him nonsense that dog's worth more than most men stanley i said ease that and more tension the dog rose on his hind legs and stood upright for a full minute eyes right he sat on his haunches and turned his head sharp to the right at a sign he rose and barked thrice then he shook hands with his right paw and bounded lightly to my shoulder here he made himself into a neck-tie limp and lifeless hanging down on either side of my neck i was told to pick him up and throw him in the air he fell with a howl and held up one leg part of the trick said his owner you're going to die now dig yourself your little grave and shut your little eye still limping the dog hobbled to the garden edge dug a hole and lay down in it when told that he was cured he jumped out wagging his tail and whining for applause he was put through half a dozen other tricks such as showing how he would hold a man safe i was that man and he sat down before me his teeth bared ready to spring and how he would stop eating at the word of command i had no more than finished praising him when my friend made a gesture that stopped the dog as though he had been shot took a piece of blue-ruled canteen paper from his helmet handed it to me and ran away while the dog looked after him and howled i read sir i give you the dog because of what you got me out of he is the best i know for i made him myself and he is as good as a man

please do not give him too much to eat and please do not give him back to me for i'm not going to take him if you will keep him so please do not try to give him back any more i have kept his name back so you can call him anything and he will answer but please do not give him back he can kill a man as easy as anything but please do not give him too much meat he knows more than a man vixen sympathetically joined her shrill little yap to the bull-terrier's despairing cry and i was annoyed for i knew that a man who cares for a dog is one thing but a man who loves one dog is quite another dogs are at the best no more than fermanist vagrants self-scratchers foul feeders and unclean by the law of moses and mohammed but a dog with whom one lives alone for at least six months in the year a free thing tied to you so strictly by love that without you he will not stir or exercise a patient temperate humorous wise soul who knows your moods before you know them yourself is not a dog under any ruling i had vixen who was all my dog to me and i felt what my friend must have felt at tearing out his heart in this style and leaving it in my garden however the dog understood clearly enough that i was his master and did not follow the soldier as soon as he drew breath i made much of him and vixen yelling with jealousy flew at him had she been of his own sex he might have cheered himself with a fight but he only looked worriedly when she nipped his deep iron sides laid his heavy head on my knee and howled anew i meant to dine at the club that night but as darkness drew in and the dog snuffed through the empty house like a child trying to recover from a fit of sobbing i felt that i could not leave him to suffer his first evening alone

so we fed at home vixen on one side and the stranger dog on the other she watching his every mouthful and saying explicitly what she thought of his table manners which were much better than hers it was vixen's custom till the weather grew hot to sleep in my bed her head on the pillow like a christian and when morning came i would always find that the little thing had braced her feet against the wall and pushed me to the very edge of the cot this night she hurried to bed purposefully every hair up one eye on the stranger who had dropped on a mat in a helpless hopeless sort of way all four feet spread out sighing heavily she settled her head on the pillow several times to show her little airs and graces and struck up her usual whiny sing-song before slumber the stranger dog softly edged toward me i put out my hand and he licked it instantly my wrist was between vixen's teeth and her warning arr said as plainly as speech that if i took any further notice of the stranger she would bite i caught her behind her fat neck with my left hand shook her severely and said vixen if you do that again you'll be put into the verandah now remember she understood perfectly but the minute i released her she mouthed my right wrist once more and waited with her ears back and all her body flattened ready to bite the big dog's tail thumped the floor in a humble and peace-making way i grabbed a vixen a second time lifted her out of bed like a rabbit she hated that and yelled and as i had promised set her out in the veranda with the bats and the moonlight at this she howled then she used coarse language not to me but to the bull terrier till she coughed till she coughed and she called and she used coarse language not to me but to the bull terrier till she coughed

with exhaustion then she ran round the house drying every door then she went off to the stables and barked as though some one were stealing the horses which was an old trick of hers last she returned and her snuffing yelp said i'll be good let me in and i'll be good she was admitted and flew to her pillow when she was quieted i whispered to the other dog you can lie on the foot of the bed the bull jumped up at once and though i felt vixen quiver with rage she knew better than to protest so we slept till the morning and they had early breakfast with me bite for bite till the horse came round and we went for a ride i don't think the bull had ever followed a horse before he was wild with excitement and vixen as usual squealed and scutted and scooted and took charge of the procession there was one corner of a village near by which we generally passed with caution because all the yellow pariah dogs of the place gathered about it they were half-wild starving beasts and though utter cowards yet where nine or ten of them get together they will mob and kill and eat an english dog i kept a whip with a long lash for them that morning they attacked vixen who perhaps of design had moved from beyond my horse's shadow the bull was ploughing along in the dust fifty yards behind rolling in his run and smiling as bull terrier's will i heard vixen squeal half a dozen of a curves closed in on her a white street came up behind me a cloud of dust rose near vixen and when it cleared i saw one tall pariah with his back broken and the bull wrenching another to earth vixen retreated to the protection of my whip and the bull paddled back smiling more than ever covered with the blood of his enemies that decided me to call him garen of the bloody breast who was a great person in his time or garum for short

so leaning forward i told him what his temporary name would be he looked up while i repeated it and then raced away i shouted garen he stopped raced back and came up to ask my will then i saw that my soldier friend was right and that that dog knew and was worth more than a man at the end of the right i gave an order which vixen knew and hated go away and get washed i said garrin understood some part of it and vixen interpreted the rest and the two trotted off together soberly when i went to the back veranda vixen had been washed snowy white and was very proud of herself but the dog-boy would not touch garm on any account unless i stood by so i waited while he was being scrubbed and garm with the soap creaming on the top of his broad head looked at me to make sure that this was what i expected him to endure he knew perfectly that the dog-boy was only obeying orders another time i said to the dog-boy you will wash the great dog with vixen when i send them home does he know said the dog-boy who understood the ways of dogs garum i said another time you will be washed with vixen when i send them home does he know said the dog-boy who understood the ways of dogs garum i said another time you will be washed with vixen i knew that garm understood indeed next washing-day when vixen as usual fled under my bed garm stared at the doubtful dog-boy in the veranda stalked to the place where he had been washed last time and stood rigid in the tub but the long days in my office tried him sorely we three would drive off in the morning at half-past eight and come home at six or later vixen knowing the routine of it went to sleep under my table but the confinement ate into garm's soul he generally sat on the verandah looking out on the mall and well i knew what he expected

sometimes a company of soldiers would move along on their way to the fort and garm rode forth to inspect them or an officer in uniform entered into the office and it was pitiful to see poor garms welcome to the cloth not the man he would leap at him and sniff and bark joyously then run to the door and back again one afternoon i heard in bay with a full throat a thing i had never heard before and he disappeared when i drove into my garden at the end of the day a soldier in white uniform scrambled over the wall at the far end and the garm that met me was a joyous dog this happened twice or thrice a week for a month i pretended not to notice but garm knew and vixen knew he would glide homewards from the office about four o'clock as though he were only going to look at the scenery and this he did so quietly that but for vixen i should not have noticed him the jealous little dog under the table would give a sniff and a snort just loud enough to call my attention to the flight garm might go out forty times in the day and vixen would never stir but when he slunk off to see his true master in my garden she told me in her own tongue that was the one sign she made to prove that garm did not altogether belong to the family they were the best of friends at all times but vixen explained that i was never to forget garm did not love me as she loved me i never expected it the dog was not my dog could never be my dog and i knew he was as miserable as his master who tramped eight miles a day to see him so it seemed to me that the sooner the two were reunited the better for all one after i sent vixen home alone in the dog-cart garm had gone before and rode over to cantonments to find another friend of mine who was an irish soldier and a great friend of the dog's master

i explained the hull case and wound up with and now stanley's in my garden crying over his dog why doesn't he take him back they're both unhappy unhappy there's no sense in the little man any more but tis his fit what is his fit he travels fifty miles a week to see the bridge and he pretends not to notice me when he sees me on the road and i'm as unhappy as he is make him take the dog back it's his penance he set himself i told him by way of a joke after you'd run over him so convenient that night when he was drunk i said if he was a catholic he'd do penance off he went with that fit in his little head and a dose of fever and nothing would suit but given you the dog as a hostage hostage for what i don't want hostages from stanley for his good behavior he's keepin straight now the way it's no pleasure to associate with him has he taken the pledge if twas only that i need not care ye can take the pledge for three months on and off he says he'll never see the dog again and so mark you he'll keep straight for evermore ye know his fits well this is one of them how's the dog taken it like a man he's the best dog in india can't you make stanley take him back i can do no more than i have done but ye know his fits he's just doing his penance what will he do when he goes to the hills the doctors put him on the list it is the custom in india to send a certain number of invalids from each regiment up to stations in the himalayas for the hot weather and though the men ought to enjoy the cool and the comfort they miss the society of the barracks down below

and do their best to come back or to avoid going i felt that this move would bring matters to a head so i left herence hopefully though he called after me he won't take the dog sore you can lay your months pay on that ye know his fits i never pretended to understand private ortheris and so i did the next best thing i left him alone that some of the invalids of the regiment to which my friend belonged were ordered off to the hills early because the doctors thought marching in the cool of the day would do them good their route lay south to a place called umbala a hundred and twenty miles or more than they would turn east and march up into the hills to kosali or dougshai or sabathu i dined with the officers the night before they left they were marching at five in the morning it was midnight when i drove into my garden and surprised a white figure flying over the wall that man said my butler has been here since nine making talk to that dog he is quite mad i did not tell him to go away because he has been here many times before and because the dog-boy told me that if i told him to go away that great dog would immediately slay me he did not wish to speak to the protector of the poor and he did not ask for anything to eat or drink cadir buksh said i that was well done for the dog would surely have killed thee but i do not think the white soldier will come any more garm slept ill that night and whimpered in his dreams once he sprang up with a clear ringing bark and i heard him wagged his tail till it waked him and the bark died out in a howl he had dreamed he was with his master again and i nearly cried it was all stanley's silly fault the first halt which the detachment of invalids made was some miles from their barracks on the amritsar road and ten miles distant from my house

by a mere chance one of the officers drove back for another good dinner at the club cooking on the line of march is always bad and there i met him he was a particular friend of mine and i knew that he knew how to love a dog properly his pet was a big fat retriever who was going up to the hills for his health and though it was still april the round brown brute puffed and panted in the club veranda as though he would burst it's amazing said the officer what excuses these invalids of mine make to get back to barracks there's a man in my company now ask me for leave to go back to cantonments to pay a debt he'd forgotten i was so taken by the idea i let him go and he jingled off in an echo as pleased as punch ten months to pay a debt wonder what it was really if you'll drive me home i think i can show you i said so he went over to my house in his dog-cart with the retriever and on the way i told him the story of i was wondering where that brute had gone to he's the best dog in the regiment said my friend i offered a little fellow twenty rupees for him a month ago but he's a hostage you say for stanley's good conduct stanley's one of the best men i have when he chooses that's the reason why i said a second-rate man wouldn't have taken things to heart as he has done we drove in quietly at the far end of the garden and crept round the house there was a place close to the wall all grown about with tamarisk trees where i knew garm kept his bones even vixen was not allowed to sit near it in the full indian moonlight i could see a white uniform bending over the dog good-bye old man we could not help hearing stanley's voice for evin's sake don't get bit and go mad by any measly pie dog but you can look after yourself old man you don't get drunk and run about it and your friends you takes your bones and you eat your biscuit and you kills your enemy like a gentleman

i'm going away don't owl i'm gone off to klasali where i won't see you no more i could hear him holding garm's nose as the dog threw it up to the stars you'll stay here and behave and i'll go away and try to behave and i don't know how to leave you i don't know i think this is damn silly said the officer patting his foolish fubsy old retriever he called to the private who leaped to his feet marched forward and and saluted you here said the officer turning away his head yes sir but i'm just goin back i shall be leaving here at eleven in my cart you come with me i can't have sick men running about all over the place report yourself at eleven here we did not say much when we went indoors but the officer muttered and pulled his retriever's ears he was a disgraceful overfed doormat of a dog and when he waddled off to my cook-house to be fed i had a brilliant idea idea at eleven o'clock that officer's dog was nowhere to be found and you never heard such a fuss as his owner made he called and shouted and grew angry and hunted through my garden for half an hour then i said he's sure to turn up in the morning send a man in by rail and i'll find the beast and return him beast said the officer i value that dog considerably more than i value any man i know it's all very fine for you to talk your dog's here so she was under my feet and had she been missing food and wages would have stopped in my house till her return but some people grow fond of dogs not worth a cut of the whip my friend had to drive away at last with stanley in the back seat and then the dog-boy said to me what kind of animal is bullen sahib's dog look at him

i went to the boy's hut and the fat old reprobate was lying on a mat carefully chained up he must have heard his master calling for twenty minutes but had not even attempted to join him he has no face said the dog-boy scornfully he is a panier couter a spaniel he never tried to get that cloth off his jaws when his master called now vixen baba would have jumped through the window and that great dog would have slain me with his muzzled mouth it is true that there are many kinds of dogs next evening who should turn up but stanley the officer had sent him back fourteen miles by rail with a note begging me to return the retriever if i had found him and if i had not to offer huge rewards the last train to camp left at half-past ten and stanley stayed till ten talking to i argued and entreated and even threatened to shoot the bull terrier but the little man was as firm as a rock though i gave him a good dinner and talked to him most severely garm knew as well as i that this was the last time he could hope to see his man and followed stanley like a shadow the retriever said nothing but licked his lips after his meal and waddled off without so much as saying thank you to the disgusted dog-boy so that last meeting was over and i felt as wretched as garm who moaned in his sleep sleep all night when we went to the office he found a place under the table close to vixen and dropped flat till it was time to go home there was no more running out into the verandas no slinking away for stolen talks with stanley as the weather grew warmer the dogs were forbidden to run beside the cart but sat at my side on the seat vixen with her head under the crook of my left elbow and garm hugging the left handrail here vixen was ever in great form she had to attend to all the moving traffic such as the

bullet carts that blocked away and camels and lead ponies as well as to keep up her dignity when she passed low friends running in the dust she never yapped for yapping's sake but her shrill high bark was known all along the mall and other men's terriers kaiyed in reply and bullock drivers looked over their shoulders and gave us the road with a grin but garm cared for none of these things his big eyes were on the horizon and his terrible mouth was shut there was another dog in the office who belonged to my chief we called him bob the librarian because he always imagined vain rats behind the bookshel's and in hunting for them would drag out half the old newspaper files bob was a well-meaning idiot but garm did not encourage him he would slide his head round the door panting rats come along garm and garm would shift one forepaw over the other and curl himself round leaving bob to whine at a most uninterested back the office was nearly as cheerful as a tomb in those days once and only once did i see garm at all contented with his surroundings he had gone for an unauthorized walk with bickson early one sunday morning and a very young and foolish artilleryman his battery had just moved to that part of the world tried to steal them both vixen of course knew better than to take food from soldiers and besides she had just finished her breakfast so she trotted back with a large piece of the mutton that they issued to our troops laid it down on my verandah and looked up to see what i thought i asked her where garan was and she ran in front of the horse to show me the way about a mile up the road we came across our artillery men sitting very stiffly on the edge of a culvert with a greasy handkerchief on his knees garin was in front of him looking rather pleased when the man moved leg or hand garren bared his teeth in silence a broken string hung from his collar and the other half of it lay all warm in the artillery man's still hand

he explained to me keeping his eyes straight in front of him that he had met this dog he called him awful names walking alone and was going to take him to the fort to be killed for a masterless pariah i said that garan did not seem to meet much of a pariah but that he had better take him to the fort if he thought best he said he did not care to do so i told him to go to the fort alone he said he did not want to go at that hour but would follow my advice as soon as i had called off the dog i instructed garron to take him to the fort and garum marched him solemnly up to the gate one mile and a half under a hot sun and i told the quarter-guard what had happened but the young artilleryman was more angry than was at all necessary when they began to laugh several regiments he was told had tried to steal garum in their time that month the hot weather shut down in earnest and the dog slept in the bathroom on the cool wet bricks where the bath is placed every morning as soon as the man filled my bath the two jumped in and every morning the man filled the bath a second time i said to him that he might as well fill a small tub specially for the dogs nay said he smiling it is not their custom they would not understand besides the big bath gives them more space the punca coolies who pull the punkas day and night came to know garin intimately he noticed that when the swaying fan stopped i would call out to the coolly and bid him pull with a long stroke if the man still slept i would wake him up he discovered too that it was a good thing to lie in the wave of air under the punca maybe stanley had taught him all about this in barracks at any rate when the punca stopped geron would first growl and cocka's eye at the rope and if that did not wake the man it nearly always did he would tiptoe forth and talk in the sleeper's ear vixen was a clever little dog but she could never connect the punca and the coolly so garen gave me grateful hours of cool sleep

but he was utterly wretched as miserable as a human being and in his misery he clung so closely to me that other men noticed it and were envious if i moved from one room to another garen followed if my pen stopped scratching garms head was thrust into my hand if i turned half awake on the pillow garum was up and at my side for he knew that i was his only link with his master and day and night and night and day his eyes asked one question when is this going to end living with the dog as i did i never noticed that he was more than ordinarily upset by the hot weather till one day at the club a man said that dog of yours will die in a week or two he's a shadow then i dosed garron with iron and quinine which he hated and i felt very anxious he lost his appetite and vixen was allowed to eat his dinner under his eyes even that did not make him swallow and we held a consultation on him of the best man-doctor in the place a lady-doctor who cured the sick wives of kings and the deputy inspector-general of the veterinary service of all india they pronounced upon his symptoms and i told them his story and garm lay on a sofa licking my hand he's dying of a broken heart said the lady doctor suddenly upon my word said the deputy inspector general i believe mrs mccray is perfectly right as usual the best man-doctor in the place wrote a prescription and the veterinary deputy inspector-general went over it afterwards to be sure that the drugs were in the proper dog proportions and that was the first time in his life that our doctor ever allowed his prescriptions to be edited it was a strong tonic and it put the dear boy on his feet for a week or two then he lost flesh again i asked the man i knew to take him up to the hills with him when he went and the man came to the door with his kit packed on the top of the carriage garin took in the situation at one red glance the hair rose along his back he sat down in front of me and delivered the most awful growl i've ever heard in the jaws of a dog

i shouted to my friend to get away at once and as soon as the carriage was out of the garden garron laid his head on my knee and whined so i knew his answer and devoted myself to getting stanley's address in the hills my turn to go to the cool came late in august we were allowed thirty days holiday in a year if no one fell sick and we took it as we could be spared my chief and bob the librarian had their holiday first and when they were gone i made a calendar as i always did and hung it up at the head of my cot tearing off one day at a time till they returned vixen had gone up to the hills with me five times before and she appreciated the cold and the damp and the beautiful wood fires there as much as i did garm i said we are going back to stanley at cassoli cassoli stanley stanley stanley stanley and i repeated it twenty times it was not cassali really but another place still i remembered what stanley had said in my garden on the last night and i dared not change the name then garm began to to tremble then he barked and then he leaped up at me frisking and wagging his tail not now i said holding up my hand when i say go we'll go i pulled out the little blanket coat and spike collar that vixen always wore up in the hills to protect her against sudden chills and thieving leopards and i let the two smell them and talk it over what they said of course i do not know but it made a new dog of garm his eyes were bright and he barked joyfully when i spoke to him he ate his food and he killed his rats for the next three weeks and when he began to whine i had only to say stanley cassali cassali stanley to wake him up i wish i had thought of it before my chief came back all browned with living in the open air and very angry at finding it so hot in the plains that same afternoon we three and cadir bucksh began to pack for our months holiday vixen rolling in and out of the bullock trunk twenty times a minute

and garum grinning all over and thumping on the floor with his tail vixen knew the routine of travelling as well as she knew my office work she went to the station singing songs on the front seat of the carriage while garen sat with me she hurried into the railway carriage saw cadir bucksh make up my bed for the night got her drink of water and curled up with her black patch eye on the tumult of the platform garran followed her the crowd gave him a lane all to himself and sat down on the pillows with his eyes blazing and his tail a haze behind him we came to umbola in the hot misty dawn four or five men who had been working hard for eleven months shouting for our dales the two horse-travelling carriages that were to take us up to calca at the foot of the hills it was all new to grom he did not understand carriages where you lay at full length on your bedding the vixen knew and hopped into her place at once garran following the calcare road before the railway was built was about forty-seven miles long and the horses were changed every eight miles most of them jibbed and kicked and plunge but they had to go and they went rather better than usual for graham's deep bay in their rear it was a river to be forded and four bullocks pulled the carriage and vixen stuck her head out of the sliding door and nearly fell into the water while she gave directions garen was silent and curious and rather needed reassuring about stanley and cassoli so we rolled barking and yelping into calcare for lunch and garm ate enough for two after calca the road wound among the hills and we took a curricle with half-broken ponies which were changed every six miles no one dreamed of a railroad to simla in those days where it was seven thousand feet up in the air the road was more than fifty miles long and the regulation pace was just as fast as the ponies could go here again vixen led garm from one carriage to the other jumped into the back seat and shouted

a cool breath from the snows met us about five miles out of calca and she whined for her coat wisely fearing a chill on the liver i had had one made for garm too and as we climbed to the fresh breezes i put it on and garm chewed it uncomprehendingly but i think he was grateful hi ay yai yai sang vixen as we shot round the curves tut tut tut went the driver's bugle at the dangerous places and yow yow bade garm cadir bucksh sat on the front seat and smiled even he was glad to get away from the heat of the plains that stood in the haze behind us now and then we would meet a man we knew going down to his work again and he would say what's it like below and i would shout hotter than cinders what's it like up above and he would shout back just perfect and away we would go suddenly cadir bachsh said over his shoulder here is solon and garm snored where he lay with his head on my knee solon is an unpleasant little cantonman but it has the advantage of being cool and healthy it is all bare and windy and one generally stops at a rest-house nearby for something to eat i got out and took both dogs with me while cadir buckch made tea a soldier told us we should find stanley out there nodding his head towards a bare bleak hill when we climbed to the top we spied that very stanley who had given me all this trouble sitting on a rock with his face in his hands and his overcoat hanging loose about him i never saw anything so lonely and dejected in my life as this one little man crumpled up and thinking on the great gray hillside here garm left me he departed without a word and so far as i could see without moving his legs he flew through the air bodily and i heard the whack of him as he flown himself at stanley knocking the little man clean over they rolled on the ground together shouting and yelping and hugging i could not see which was dog and which was man till stanley got up and whimpered he told me that he had been suffering from fever at intervals and was very weak he looked all he said but even while i watched both men and dog plumped out

to their natural sizes precisely as dried appleswell in water garen was on his shoulder and his breast and feet all at the same time so that stanley spoke all through a cloud of garen gulping sobbing slavering gone he did not say anything that i could understand except that he had fancied he was going to die but that now he was quite well and that he was not going to give up garen any more to anybody under the rank of beelzebub then he said he felt hungry and thirsty and happy we went down to tea at the rest-house and where Stanley stuffed himself with sardines and raspberry jam and beer and cold mutton and pickles when Garm wasn't climbing over him, and then Vixen and I went on. Garm saw how it was at once, he said goodbye to me three times, giving me both paws, one after another, and leaping on to my shoulder. He further escorted us, singing Hosanas at the top of his voice, a mile down the road, then he raced back to his own master. Vixen never opened her mouth, but when the cold twilight came and we could see the lights of sea, Simla across the hills. She snuffled with her nose at the breast of my ulster. I unbuttoned it and tucked her inside. Then she gave a contented little sniff and fell fast asleep, her head on my

breast, till we bundled out at Simla to the four happiest people in all the world that night. End of Section 3. Section 4 of Actions and Reactions. This is the Librevox recording. All Librevox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. Recording by Josh Kibby. Actions and Reactions by Rudyard Kipling. The Power of the Dog. There is sorrow enough in the natural way for men and women to fill our day, but when we are certain of sorrow in store, why do we always arrange for more? Brothers and sisters, I bid you beware of giving your heart to a dog to tear. By a public,

and your money will buy love unflinching that cannot lie, perfect passion and worship fed by a kick in the ribs or a pat on the head. Nevertheless, it is hardly fair to risk your heart for a dog to tear. When the 14 years which nature permits are closing in asthma or tumor or fits, and the vet's unspoken prescription runs to lethal chambers or loaded guns, then you will find it's your own affair, but you've given your heart to a dog to tear. When the body that lived at your single will, when the whimper of welcome is stilled, house still, when the spirit that answered your every mood is gone wherever it goes for good, you will discover how much you care, and will give your heart to a dog to tear.

We've sorrow enough in the natural way, when it comes to burying Christian clay. Our loves are not given, but only lint, at compound interest of cent per cent, though it is not always the case, I believe, that the longer we've kept them, the more do we grieve. For when debts are payable, right or wrong, a short-time loan is as bad as a long. So why in heaven, before we are there, should we give our hearts to a dog to tear? End of Section 4 Section 5 of Actions and Reactions This is a Librevox recording.

All Librevox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librevox.org. Recording by Janu Actions and Reactions By Rudyard Kipling The mother hive. If the stock had not been old and overcrowded, the wax moth would never have entered, but where bees are too thick on the comb, there must be sickness or parasites.

The heat of the hive had risen with the June honey flow, and though the farmers worked until their wings ached to keep people cool, everybody suffered. A young bee crawled up the greasy trampled alighting board. Excuse me, she began, but it's my friend. First Honey Flight. Could you kindly tell me if this is my own hive? The guard snapped. Yes, buzz in and be foul-brewed to you. Next! Shame! cried half a dozen old workers with worn wings and nerves, and there was a scuffle and a hum. The little grey wax moth, pressed close in a crack in the alighting board,

had waited this chance all day. She scuttled in like a ghost, and knowing the senior bees would turn her out at once, dodged into a brood frame, where youngsters who had not yet seen the winds blow or the flowers nod discussed life. Here she was safe, for young bees will tolerate any sort of stranger. Behind her came the bee who had been slanged by the guard. What is the world like, Melissa? said a companion. Cruel! I brought in a full load of first-class stuff, and the guard told me to go and be foul brooded. She sat down in the cool jot across the cones. If you'd only heard, said the wax moth sulkily,

the insolence of the guard's tone when she cursed our sister. It aroused the entire community. She laid an egg. She had stolen in for that purpose. There was a bit of a fuss on the gate, Melissa chuckled. You were there, miss? She did not know how to. address the slim stranger. Don't call me miss. I'm a sister to all in affliction, just a working sister. My heart bled for you beneath your burden. The wax moth caressed Melissa with

her soft feelers and laid another egg. You mustn't lay here, cried Melissa. You aren't a queen. My dear child, I give you my most solemn word of honor. Those aren't eggs. Those are my principal and I'm ready to die for them. She raised her voice a little above the rustle and tramp around her. If you'd like to kill me, pray do. Don't be unkind, Melissa, said a young bee, impressed by the chaste folds of the wax moth's wing, which hid her ceaseless egg-dropping. I haven't done anything, Melissa answered. She's doing it all. Ah, don't let your conscience reproach you later, but when you've killed me, write me at least as one that loved her fellow worker. Laying at every sob, the wax moth backed into a crowd of young bees and left Melissa

bewildered and annoyed. So she lifted up her little voice in the darkness and cried, Stores, till a gang of cell fillers hailed her, and she left her load with them. I am afraid I foul-birded you just now, said a voice over her short. shoulder. I'd been on the gate for three hours, and one would foul-brewed the queen herself after that. No offense meant. None taken, Melissa answered cheerily. I shall be on guard myself someday. What's next to do? There's a rumor of Death's Head Moths about. Send a gang of youngsters to the gate, and tell them to narrow it in with a couple of stout scrapwax pillars. It'll make the hive hot, but we can't have death's headers in the middle of our honey flow. My only wings, I should

think, not. Melissa had all a sound beast hereditary hatred against the big, squeaking, feathery thief of the hives. Tumble out, she called across the youngsters' quarters, all you who aren't feeding baby show a leg, scrapwax pillars for the gate, she chanted the order at length. That's nonsense. a downy day-old bee answered in the first place i never heard of a death's-header coming into a hive people don't do such things in the second building pillars to keep him out is purely a cypriot trick unworthy of british bees in the third if you trust a death's head he will trust you pillar building shows a lack of confident our dear sister in grey says so yes pillars are on english and provocative and a waste of wax that is needed for higher and more practical ends, said the wax mouth from an empty store cell. The safety of the hive is the highest thing I've ever heard of. You mustn't teach us to refuse work, Melissa began.

You misunderstand me as usual, love. Works the essence of life, but to expend precious, unreturning vitality and real labor against imaginary danger that is heart-breakingly absurd. If I can only teach up, a little toleration, a little ordinary kindness. Here, toward that absurd old bogey you call the death's header, my shant have lived in vain.

She hasn't lived in vain, the darling, cried twenty bees together. You should see her saintly life, Melissa. She just devotes herself to spreading her principles, and she looks lovely. An old baldish bee came up the comb. Pillar workers for the gate, get out and chew scraps, buzz off, she said. The wax-moth slipped aside. The young beast trooped down the frame, whispering.

What's the matter with them? said the oldster. Why do they call each other duckie and darling? Must be the weather. She sniffed suspiciously. Horrid stuffy smell here, like stale quilts. Not wax-moth, I hope, Melissa. Not to my knowledge, said Melissa, who, of course, only knew the waxmouth as a lady with principles and had never thought to report her presence.

She had always imagined wax moths to be like blood-red dragonflies. You had better fan out this corner for a little, said the old bee and passed on. Melissa dropped her head at once, took firm hold with her forefeet, and fanned obediently at the regulation stroke 300 beats to the second. Fanning tries a bee's temper, because she must always keep in the same place where she never seems to be doing any good, and all the while she is wearing out her only wing. When a bee cannot fly, a bee must not live, and a bee knows it. The wax moth crept forward and caressed Melissa again.

I see, she murmured, that at heart you are one of us. I work with the hive, Melissa answered briefly. It's the same thing. We and the hive are one. Then why are your feelers different from ours? Don't cuddle so. Don't be provincial, charisma. You can't have all the world alike yet.

But why do you lay eggs, Melissa insisted? You lay them like a queen, only you drop them in patches all over the place. I've watched you. Ah, bright eyes, so you've pierced my little subterfuge. Yes, they are eggs. By and by they'll spread our principles. Aren't you glad? You gave me your most solemn word of honor that they were not eggs.

That was my little subterfuge, dearest, for the sake of the call. Now I must reach the young. The wax moth tripped toward the fourth brood frame where the young bees were busy feeding the babies. It takes some time for a sound bee to realize a malignant and continuous lie. She's very sweet and feathery, was all that Melissa thought, but her talk sounds like ivy honey taste. I'd better get to my fieldwork again. She found the gate in a sulky uproar. The youngsters told off to the pillar.

told off to the pillars, had refused to chew scrap wax because it made their jaws ache and were clamoring for virgin stuff. Anything to finish the job, said the badgered guards, hang up some of you and make wax for these slack-jogged sisters. Before a bee can make wax, she must fill herself with honey. Then she climbs to safe foothold and hangs, while other gorged bees hang out to her in a cluster. Then they wait in silence till the wax comes. The scales are either taken out of the maker's pockets by the workers or tinkle down on the workers while they wait. The workers chew them, they are useless untuned, into the all-supporting, all-embracing wax of the hive.

But now, no sooner was the wax cluster in position than the workers below broke out again. Come down, they cried. Come down and work. Come on, you leventine parasites. Don't think to enjoy yourselves up there while we're sweating down here. The cluster shivered, as from hooked forefoot to hooked hindfoot, it telegraphed uneasiness. At last a worker sprang up, grabbed the lowest wax maker and swung, kicking above her companions. I can make wax too, she bawled. Give me a full gorge and I'll make tons of it.

Make it then, said the bee she had grappled. The spoken word snapped the current through the clans. cluster. It shook and glistened like a cat's fur in the dark. Unhook, it murmured, no wax for anyone today. You lazy thieves, hang up at once and produce our wax, said the bees below. Impossible, the sweat's gone. To make your wax, we must have stillness, warmth and food. Unhook, unhook! They broke up as they murmured and disappeared among the other bees, from whom, of course, they were undistinguishable. Seems as if we'd have to

chew scrapwax for these pillars after all, said a worker. Not by a whole comb, cried the young bee who had broken the cluster. Listen here, I've studied the question more than 20 minutes. It's as simple as falling off a daisy. You've heard of Cheshire,

root, and Langstroth? They had not, but they shouted, Good old Langstrath just the same. Those three know all their is to be known about making hives. One or the other of them must have made ours, and if they've made it, they are bound to look after it. Ours is a guaranteed patent hive. You can see it on the label behind. Good old guarantee. Hurrah for the label behind, roared the bees. Well, such being the case, I say that when we find they've betrayed us, we can exact from them a terrible vengeance.

good old vengeance good old root nuff said chuck it the crowd cheered and broke away as melissa dived through do you know where langstroth brute and cheshire live if you happen to want him she asked of the proud panting orator gum me if i know they ever lived at all but aren't they beautiful names to buzz about did you see how it worked up the sisterhood yes but it didn't defend the gate she replied ah perhaps that's true but think how delicate my position is sister i have a magnificent appetite and i don't like working it's bad for the mind my instinct tells me that i can act as a restraining influence on others they would have been worse but for me but melissa had already risen clear and was heading for a breadth of virgin white clover which to an overtired bee is as soothing as plain knitting to a woman I think I'll take this load to the nurseries, she said when she had finished. It was always quiet there in my day, and she topped off with two little pats of pollen for the babies. She was met on the fourth brood comb by a rush of excited sisters all buzzing together. One at a time, one at a time, let me put down my load.

Now, what is it, Sacherissa? she said. Gray sister, that fluffy one I mean, she came and said, We ought to be out in the sunshine gathering honey because life was short. She said any old bee could attend to our babies, and someday old bees would. That isn't true, Melissa, is it? No old bees can take us away from our babies, can they? Of course not. You feed the babies when your heads are soft.

When your heads hardened, you go on to field work. Anyone knows that. told herself. We told her so, but she only waved her feelers and said we could all lay eggs like queens if we chose. And I'm afraid lots of the weaker sisters believe her and are trying to do it. So unsettling. Saccharissa sped to a sealed worker cell whose lid pulsated as the bee within began to cut its way out. Come along, precious, she murmured, and thinned the frill top from the other side. A pale, damp, creased thing hoisted itself feebly onto the comb. Sakara's note changed at once.

No time to waste. Go up the frame and preen yourself, she said. Report for nursing duty in my war tomorrow evening at six. Stop a minute. What's the matter with your third right leg? The young bee held it out in silence. Unmistakably, a drone leg incapable of packing pollen. Thank you.

You need it report. port till the day after tomorrow." Sacherissa turned to her companion. That's the fifth oddity hatched in my ward since noon. I don't like it. There's always a certain number of them, said Melissa. You can't stop a few working sisters from laying now and then, when they overfeed themselves. They only raise dwarf drones.

But we're hatching out drones with workers' stomachs, workers with drone stomachs, and albinos and mixed leggers who can't pack pollen, like that poor, little beast yonder. I don't mind dwarf drones any more than you do. They all die in July, but the steady hatch of oddities frightens me, Melissa. How narrow of you! They are all so delightfully clever and unusual and interesting, piped the wax moth from a crack above them. Come here, you dear Downy Duck, and tell us all about your feelings. I wish she'd go, Sakarasia lowered her voice. She meets these er-audities as they dry out and cuddles them in corners i suppose the truth is that we're overstocked and too well fed to swarm said marissa that is the truth said the queen's voice behind them they had not heard the heavy royal footfall which sets empty cells vibrating

sacherissa offered her food at once she ate and dragged her wary body forward can you suggest a remedy she said no principles cried the wax moth from her crevice will uplift them quietly later. Suppose we sent out a swarm, Melissa suggested. It's a little late, but it might ease us off. It would save us, but I know the hives, you shall see for yourself. The old queen cried the swarming cry, to which a beat of good blood should be what the trumpet was the Jobs Warhorse. In spite of her immense age, three years, it rang between the cannon-like frames as a

Pibrock rings in a mountain pass. The Fanners changed their note and repeated it up in every gallery, and the broad-wing drones, burly and eager ended it on one nerve-thrilling outbreak of bugles. Laren Leveu, swarm, swarm, swarm! But the roar which should follow the call was wanting. They heard a broken grumble like the murmur of a falling tide. Swarm, what for? Catch me leaving a good barframe hive with fixed foundations for a rotten old oak out in the open where it may rain any minute. We're all right.

It's a patent-guaranteed hive. Why do they want to turn us out? Swarming be gunged. Swarming was invented to cheat a worker out of her proper comforts. Come on off to bed. The noise died out as the bees settled in empty cells for the night. You hear, said the queen, I know the hive. Quite between ourselves.

I taught them that, cried the wax mouth. Wait till my principles develop and you will see the light from a new quarter. You speak truth for once, the queen said suddenly, for she recognized the wax moth. That light will break into the top of the hive. A hot smoke will follow it, and your children will not be able to hide in any crevice. Is it possible, Melissa whispered. I, we have sometimes heard a legend like it. It is no legend, the old queen answered.

I had it from my mother and she had it from hers. After the wax moth has grown strong, a shadow will fall across the gate, a voice will speak from behind a veil, there will be light and hot smoke and earthquakes, and those who live will see everything that they have done, all together in one place, burned up in one great fire. The old queen was trying to tell what she had been told of the bee masters

dealing with an infected hive in the apiary two or three seasons ago. And of course, from her point of view, the affair was as important as the day of judgment. And then, asked horrified Sakarisa, then I have heard that a little light will burn in a great darkness, and perhaps the world will begin again. Myself, I think not. The wax moth cried, You good, fat people, always prophecy ruin

if things don't go exactly your way, but I grant you there will be changes. There were. When her eggs hatched, the wax was riddled with little tunnels, coated with the dirty clothes of caterpillars. Flannily lines ran through the honey stores, the pollen larders, the foundations, and, worst of all, threw the babies in their cradles, till the sweeper

guards spent half their time tossing out useless little corpses. The lines ended in a maze of sticky webbing on the face of the cone. The caterpillars could not stop spinning as they walked, and as they walked everywhere, they smarmed and garmed everything. Even where it did not hamper the bee's feet, the stale, sour smell of the stuff put the, them off their work, though some of the bees who had taken to egg-lane said it encouraged them to be mothers and maintain a vital interest in life. When the caterpillars became moths, they made friends with the ever-increasing oddities, albinos, mixed-leggers, single-eyed composites, faceless drones, half-quins, and laying sisters, and the ever-dwindling band of the old stock

worked themselves bald and fray wing to feed their queer charges. Most of the oddities would not, and many, on account of their malformations, could not go through a day's fieldwork. But the wax moths, who were always busy on the brood comb, found pleasant home occupations for them. One albino, for instance, divided the number of pounds of honey in stock by the number of bees in the hive, and proved that if every bee only gathered honey for seven and three-quarter minutes a day, she would have the rest of the time to herself, and could accompany the drones on their mating flights. The drones were not at all pleased.

Another, an eyeless drone with no feelers, said that all brood cells should be perfect circles, so as not to interfere with the grub or the workers. He proved that the old six-sided cell was solely due to, to the workers building against each other on opposite sides of the wall, and that if there were no interference, there would be no angles. Some bees tried the new plan for a while, and found it cost eight times more wax than the old six-sided specification, and as they never allowed a cruster to hang up and make

wax in peace, real wax was scarce. However, they eked out their task with varner stolen from new coffins at funerals, and made them rather sick. Then they took to cadging round sugar factories and breweries, because it was easiest to get their materials from those places, and the mixture of glucose and beer naturally fermented in store and blew the store shells out of shape besides smelling abominably. Some of the sound bees warned them that ill-gotten gains never prosper, but the oddities at once surrounded them and bawled them to death. There was a punishment they were almost as fond of as they were of eating, and they expected the sound bees to feed them.

Curiously enough, the age-old instinct of loyalty and devotion towards the hive made the sound bees do this, though their reason told them they ought to slip away and unite with some other healthy stock in the apiary. What, about seven and three-quarters minutes work now, said Melissa one day as she came in, I've been at it for five hours, and I've only half a load. Oh, the hive subsists on the hiveal honey which the hive produces, said a blind oddity squatting in a sore cell. But the honey is gathered from flowers outside two miles away sometimes, cried Melissa.

Pardon me, said the blind thing, sucking hard, but this is the hive, is it not? It was. worse luck, it is. And the hive-wale honey is here, is it not? It opened a fresh store cell to prove it. Yes, but it won't be long at this rate. The rates have nothing to do with it. This hide produces the hive-l-honey. You people never seem to grasp the economic simplicity that underlies all life. Oh, me, said poor Melissa. Haven't you ever been beyond the gate? Certainly not. A fool's eyes are in the ends of the earth. Mine are in my head. It gorge till it bloated. Melissa took refuge in her poorly paid fieldwork and told Sacheras of the story.

"'Hut,' said that, wise bee, fretting with an old maid of a thistle, tell us something new. The hives full of such as him, it, I mean, what's the end going to be? All the honey going out, and none coming in? Things can't last this way, said Melissa. Who cares? said Sakarisa. I know now how drones feel the day before they're killed, a short life and a merry one for me. If it only were merry,

but think of those awful, solemn, lopsided oddities waiting for us at home, crawling and clambering and preaching, and dirtying things in the dark. I don't mind that so much as their silly songs after we fed him, all about work among the merry-mary blossoms, said Saccharissa, from the deeps of a stale Canterbury bell. I do. How's our queen? said Melissa. Cheerfully hopeless as usual, but she lays an egg now and then.

Does she so? Melissa backed out of the next bell with a jerk. suppose now we sound workers tried to raise a princess in some clean corner you'd be put to it to find one the hives all wax-moth and muckings but well a princess might help us in the time of the voice behind the veil that the queen talks of anything is better than working for oddities that chirp about work that they can't do and waste what we bring home who cares said sachera i'm with you you for the fun of it. The oddities would ball us to death if they knew. Come home and we'll begin. There is no room to tell how the experienced Melissa found a far-off frame so messed and mishandled by abandoned cell-building experiments that, for very shame, the bees never went there. How in that ruin she blocked out a royal cell of sound wax but disguised by rubbish to

look like a copia among deserted copias. How she prevailed upon the hopeless queen to make one last effort and lay a worthy egg. How the queen obeyed and died. How her spent carcass was flung out on the rubbish heap, and how a multitude of laying sisters went about dropping drone eggs where they listed, and said there was no more need of queens. How, covered by this confusion, Sakurissa educated certain young bees to educate certain newborn beasts in the lost art of making royal jelly. How the nectar for it was one out of hours in the teeth of chill wind. How the hidden egg hatched true. No drone but blood royal. How it was

capped and how desperately they worked to feed and double feed the now-swarming oddities, lest any break in the food supplies should set them to instituting inquiries, which with songs about work was their favorite amusement. How, in an auspicious hour, on a moonless night, the princess came forth the princess indeed, and how Melissa smuggled her into a dark, empty honey magazine to bide her time, and how the drones, knowing she was there, went about singing the deep, disreputable love songs of the old days to the scandal of the laying sisters who do not think well of drones. These things are written in the Book of Queens, which is laid up in the hollow of the great ash-ydrasil.

After a few days, the weather changed again and became glorious. Even the oddities would now join the crowd that hung out on the alighting board, and would sing of work among the merry, merry blossoms till an untrained ear might have received it for the hum of a working hive. Yet, in truth, their store honey had been eaten long ago. They lived from day to day on the efforts of the few sound bees, while the wax moth fretted and consumed again their already ruined wax. But the sound bees never mentioned these matters. They knew, if they did, the oddities would hold the meeting and bawled them to death.

Now you see what we have done, said the wax moths. We have created new material, a new convention, a new teut. type, as we said we would. And new possibilities for us, said the laying sisters gratefully, you have given us a new life's work, vital and paramount. More than that, chanted the oddities in the sunshine. You have created a new heaven and a new earth. Heaven, cloudless and accessible.

It was the perfect August evening. An earth teeming with the merry, merry blossoms, waiting only our honest toil to turn them all to good. the er astor and the crocus and the er ladies smock in her season the chrysanthemum after her kind and the gulder rose bringing forth abundantly withal oh holy hymnus said melissa austra i knew they didn't know how honey was made but they'd forgotten the order of the flowers what will be come of them a shadow fell across the alighting board as the bee-master and his sun came by. The oddities crawled in, and a voice behind the veil said, I've neglected the old hive too long. Give me the smoker. Melissa heard and darted through the gate.

Come, oh come, she cried. It is the destruction the old queen foretold. Princess, come! Really, you are too archaic for words, said an oddity in an alleyway. A cloud, I admit, may have crossed the sun, but why hysterics? Above all, why princesses so late in the day? Are you aware it's the high-ville tea time? Let's sing grace. Melissa clawed past him with all six legs. Saccharissa had run to what was left of the fertile brood-comb.

Down and out, she called across the broad breath of it. Nurses, guards, fanners, sweepers out. Never mind the babies, they're better dead. Out before the light and the hot smoke. The princess's first clear, fearless call, Melissa had found her, rose and drummed through all the frames. Lorraine LeVue, swarm, swarm! The hive shook beneath the shattering thunder of a struck-down quilt being torn back. Don't be alarmed, dearest, said the wax moths.

That's our work! Look up and you'll see the dawn of the new day. Light broke in the top of the hive as the queen had prophecy, naked light on the boiling, bewildered bees. Saccharissa had rounded up her rear guard, which dropped headlong off the frame, and joined the princess's detachment susting toward the gate. Now panic was in full blast, and each sound bee found herself embraced by at least three oddities. the first instinct of a frightened bee is to break into the stores and gorge yourself with honey but there were no stores left so the oddities fought with the sound bees you must feed us or we shall die they cried holding and clutching and slipping while the silent scared earwigs and little spiders twisted between their legs think of the hive traitors the holy hive

you should have thought before cried the sound bees stay and see the dawn of your new day they reached the gate at last over the soft body of many to whom they had ministered on out up roared melissa in the princess's ear for the hive's sake to the old oak the princess left the alighting board circled once and flung herself at the lowest branch of the old oak and her little loyal swine You could have covered it with a pint mug, followed, hooked, and hung. Hold close, Melissa, gasped. The old legends have come true. Look! The hive was half hidden by smoke. They heard a frame crack stickily, saw it heaved high and twirled round between enormous hands, blotched, bulged, and perished horror of gray wax, corrupt brood and small drone cells, all covered with crawling oddity strained to the sun. Why, this isn't a hive, this is a museum of curiosities, said the voice behind the veil.

It was only the bee master talking to his son. Can you blame him, father? said a second voice. It's rotten with wax moth. See here. Another frame came up. A finger poked through it, and it broke away in rustling flakes of ashy wreaths. rottenness. Number four, frame. That was your mother's pet comb once, whispered Melissa to the princess. Many's the good egg I've watched her lay there. Aren't you confusing post hoc with

prompter hawk? said the bee master. Wax moth only succeed when weak bees let them in. A third frame crackled and rose into the light. All this is full of laying workers brood. That never happens till the stock weakened. Feeh! He beat it on his knee like a tambourine and it also crumbled to pieces. The little swarm shivered as they watched the dwarf drone grubs squirm feebly on the grass.

Many sound bees had nursed on that frame, well knowing their work was useless, but the actual sight of even useless work destroyed disheartens a good worker. No, they have some recuperative power left. said the second voice, here's a queen cell. But it's tucked away among, what on earth has come to the little wretches,

they seem to have lost the instinct of cell building. The father held up the frame where the bees had experimented in circular cell work. It looked like the pitted heart of a decaying toadstool. Not altogether, the son corrected. There's one line at least of perfectly good cells. My work, said Sackera said to herself, i am glad man does me justice before that frame too was smashed out and thrown atop of the others and the foul ear-wiggy quilts

as frame after frame followed it the swarm beheld the upheaval exposure and destruction of all that had been well or ill done in every clanny of their high for generations past there was black combs so old that they had forgotten where it hung Orange, buff, and ochre varnish-store comb, built as bees were used to build before the days of artificial foundations. There was a little, white, frail new work. There were sheets on sheets of level, even-brewed comb that had held in its time unnumbered thousands of unnamed workers. Paches of obsolete drone comb broad and high shoulder, showing what marks the male grub was expected to grow. and two-inch deep honey magazines, empty but still magnificent, the whole gummed and glued into twisted scrapwork, awry on the wires, half-cells, beginnings abandoned, or grandiose, weak-walled composite cells,

pieced out with rubbish and capped with dirt. Good or bad, every inch of it was so riddled by the tunnels of the wax moth that it broke into clouds of dust as it was flung on the heap. Oh, see, cried Zacharissa, the great burning that our queen foretold. Who can bear to look? A flame crawled up the pile of rubbish and these smelt singeing wax. The figure stooped, lifted the hive and shook it upside down over the pyre. A cascade of oddities, chips of broken comb, scale, fluff, and grubs lit out,

crackled, sizzled, popped a little, and then the flames roared up and cut. consumed all that fuel. We must disinfect, said a voice. Get me a sulfur candle, please. The shell of the hive returned to its place. A light was set in its sticky emptiness, tier by tier the figures built it up, closed the entrance, and went away.

The swarm watched a light, leaking through the cracks all the long night. At dawn, one wax moth came by, fluttering impudently. There has been a miscalibed. calculation about the new day, my dears, she began, one can't expect people to be perfect all at once. That was our mistake. No, the mistake was entirely ours. Pardon me, said the wax moth. When you think of the enormous upheaval, call it good or bad, which our influence

brought about, you will admit that we and we alone, you, said the princess, our stock was not strong. so you came as any other disease might have come. Hand close, all my people. When the sun rose, veiled figures came down and saw their swarm at the boughs end, waiting patiently within sight of the old hive, a handful, but prepared to go on. End of Section 5.

Recording by Janu. Section 6 of actions and reactions this is a libravox recording all libravox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libravox dot org actions and reactions by rudyard kipling the bees and the flies a farmer of the augustine age perused in virgil's golden page the story of the secret one from proteus by cyrini's son how the dank see god sowed the swain means to restore his hives again more briefly how a slaughtered bull breeds honey by the belly full the egregious rustic put to death a bull by stopping of its breath disposed the carcass in a shed with fragrant herbs and branches spread and having thus performed a charm sat down to wait the promised swarm nor waited long the god of day impartial quickening with his ray evil and good alike beheld the carcass and the carcass swelled big with new birth the belly heaves beneath its screen of scented leaves past any doubt the bull conceives the farmer bids men bring more hives to house the prophet that arrives prepares on pan and key and kettle

sweet music that shall make em settle but when to crown the work he goes gods what a stink salutes his nose where are the honest toilers where the gravid mistress of their care a busy scene indeed he sees but not a sign or sound of bees worms of the riper grave unhid by any kindly coffin-lid obscene and shameless to the light-and-shame and shameless to the light Seath in insatiate appetite through putrid awful, while above the hissing blowfly seeks his love, whose offspring, supping where they supped, consume corruption, twice corrupt. End of Section 6. Section 7 of actions and reactions. This is a Librevox recording. All Librevox recordings are in the public domain. more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org.

Actions and Reactions by Rudyard Kipling with The Nightmail, a story of 2000 AD, together with extracts from the magazine in which it appeared. At 9 o'clock of Augusta Winter Night, I stood on the lower stages of one of the GPO outward mail towers. My purpose was around to Quebec in, quote, postal packet 162 or such other as may be appointed." And the postmaster-general himself countersigned the order.

This talisman opened all doors, even those in the dispatching caisson, at the foot of the tower, where they were delivering the sorted continental mail. The bags lay packed clothes as herrings in the long grey underbodies which are GPO still calls coaches. Five such coaches were filled as they watched, and were shot up the guides to be locked on to their waiting packets 300 feet nearer the stars. From the despatching Cason, I was conducted by a cautious and wonderfully learned official, Mr. L. Al-Gyrie, second dispatcher of the Western route, to the captain's room. These wakes and echo of old romance, where the male captains come on for their turn of duty.

He introduces me to the captain of 162, Captain Pernel, and his relief, Captain Hudson. The one is small and dark, the other large and red. but each has the brooding sheathed glance characteristic of eagles and aeronauts. You can see it in the pictures of our racing professionals, from L. V. Roach to little Ada Worley, that fathomless obstruction of eyes habitually turned through naked space. On the notice bird in the captain's room, the pulsing arrows of some twenty indicators,

register, degree by geographical degree, the progress of as many homeward-bound packets. The word cape rises across the face of a date, dial, a gong strikes. The South African mid-weekly mail is in at the high gate receiving towers. That is all. It reminds one comically of the treacherous little bell which in pigeon fancies lofts notifies the return of a homer. Time for us to be on the move, says Captain Pernel, and we are shot up by the passenger lift to the top of the dispatch towers. Our coach will lock on when it is filled and the clerks are aboard. Number 162 waits for us in Sleep E,

of the topmost stage. The great curve of her back shines frostly under the lights, and some minute alteration on trim makes her rock a little in her holding down slips. Captain Pernell frowns and dives inside. Hissing softly,

162 comes to rest as level as a rule. From her North Atlantic winter nose cap, worn bright as diamond with boring through uncounted leagues of hail, snow and ice, to the inset of her three built-out propeller shafts is some two hundred and forty feet her extreme diameter carried well forward is thirty seven contrast this with a nine hundred by ninety five of any crack liner and you will realize the power that must drive a hull through all weather at more than the emergency speed of the cyclonic the eye detects no joint in her skin plating save the sweeping hair crack of the bow rudder maniac's rudder that assured us the dominion of the unstable air and left its inventor penniless and left its inventor penniless and

half blind. It is calculated to Costelli's gall-wing curve. Raise a few feet of that all but invisible plate three-eighths of an inch and she will yaw five miles to board or starboard ere she is under control again. Give her a full helm and she returns on her truck like a whiplash. Can't the hole forward? Attach on the wheel will suffice and she sweeps at your good direction up or down. Open the complete circle and she presents to the air a mushroom head that will bring her up all standing within a half mile. Yes, says Captain Hudson answering my thought. Castelli thought he discovered the secret of controlling aeroplanes

when he'd only found out how to steer dirigible balloons. Maniac invented his rudder to help warboats ram each other, and war went out of fashion, and Maniac, he went out of his mind because he said he couldn't serve his country anymore. I wonder if any of us ever know what we're really doing. If you want to see the coach locked, better go aboard. It's due now, says Mr. Geary. I enter through the door amid ships. There is nothing here for display. The inner skin of the gas tanks comes down to within a foot or

two of my head and turns over just short of the turn of the bilges. Liners and yachts disguise their tanks with decoration, but the GPO serves them raw under a leak of grey official paint. The inner skin shuts off 50 feet of the bow and does match of the stern, but the bow bulkhead is recessed for the lift-shunting apparatus as the stern is pierced for the shaft tunnels. The engine room lies almost amid ships. Forward of it, extending to the turn of the biotanks, is an aperture, a bottomless hatch at present, into which our coach will be locked. One looks down over the combings, 300 feet to the dispatching case.

When its voices boom upward, the light below is obscured to a sound of thunder, as our coach rises on its guides. It enlarges rapidly from a postage stamp to a playing-class. card to a pond, and last, a pontoon. The two clerks, its crew, do not even look up as it comes into place. The Quebec letters fly under their fingers and leap into the docketed tracks, while both captains and Mr. Geary satisfy themselves that the coach is locked home. A clerk passes the way bill over the hatchcombing, Captain Pernell, thumb marks and passes it to Mr. Geary. receipt has been given and taken. Pleasant run, says Mr. Geary and disappears through the door,

which a foot-high pneumatic compressor locks after him. Ah, sighs the compressor released. Our holding down clips part with a tank. We are clear. Captain Hudson opens the great colloid underbody port-hole, through which I watch off relighted London's slide eastward as the gale gets hold of us. The first of the low winter clouds cuts off the well-known view

and darkens Middlesex. On the south edge of it, I can see a postal packet's light ploughing through the white fleece. For an instant, she clipped. like a star ere she drops toward the high gate receiving towers. The Bombay mail, says Captain Hudson, and looks at his watch. She's 40 minutes late. What's our level, I ask?

Four thousand. Aren't you coming up on the bridge? The bridge, let us ever praise the GPO as a repository of ancientist tradition, is represented by a view of Captain Hudson legs, where he stands on the control platform that runs Thorntships overhead. The balkaloid is unshuttered and Captain Pernell, one hand on the wheel, is filling for a fair sland. The dial shows 4,300 feet.

It's steep tonight, he matters, as tier on tier of cloud drops under. We generally pick up an easterly draft below 3,000 at this time of year. I hate slathering through fluff. So does Van Kutzum. Look at him hunting for a slant, says Katton-Hudson. A fog-light breaks cloud a hundred fathoms below. The Antwerp Nightmail makes her signal and rises between two racing

clouds far to port. Her flanks blood red in the glare of sheerness double light. The gale will have us over the North Sea in half an hour, but Captain Pernel lets her go composedly, nosing to every point of the compass as she rises. 5,000, 6,800. The deep dial reads ere we find the easterly drift, heralded by a flurry of snow at the thousand-fathom level. Captain Pernel rings up the engines and keys down the governor on the sweet. before him. There is no sense in urging machinery when Aeolis himself gives you good knots for nothing. We are away in earnest now, our nose notched home on our chosen star. At this level the lower clouds are laid out, all neatly combed by the dry fingers of the east. Below that again

is the strong westerly blow through which we rose. Overhead a film of southerly drifting mist throws a theatrical gauze across the firmament. The moonlight turns the lower straightest, the silver, without a stain, except where our shadow underruns us. Bristol and Cardiff double-lights, those stately inclined beams over Severn mouth, are dead ahead of us, for we keep the southern winter route. Coventry Central, the pivot of the English system, stabs upward once in ten seconds, its spear of diamond light to the north, and a point or two off our starboard bow, the leak, the great cloud-breaker of St. David's head, swings its unmistakable

green beam 25 degrees each way. There must be half a mile of fluff over it in this weather, but it does not affect the leak. Our planet's overlighted, if anything, says Captain Pernel at the wheel, as Cardiff Bristol slides under. I remember the old days of common white verticals, that it would show two or three hundred feet up in a mist, if you knew where to look for them. In really fluffy weather, they might as well have been under your hut. One could get lost coming home then, and have some fun. Now, it's like driving down Piccadilly. He points to the pillars of light

where the cloudbreakers bore through the cloud floor. We see nothing of England's outlines, only a white pavement pierce in all directions by these manholes of variously colored fire. Holy Islands white and red, St. B. is interrupted white, and so on, as far as the eye can reach. Blessed B. Sargent, Arons, and the Jubua brothers

who invented the cloudbreakers of the world whereby we travel in security. Are you going to lift for the shamrock? Asked Captain Hudson. Cork light, green, fixed, enlarges as we rush to it. Captain Pernel nods. There is heavy traffic hereabouts.

The cloud bank beneath us is strict with running features of flame, where the Atlantic boats are harrowing Londonward just clear off the fluff. Mail packets are supposed, under the conference rules, to have the 5,000-foot lanes to themselves,

but the foreigner in a lot of, hurry is up to take liberties with English air. Number 162 lifts to a long-drawn wail of the breeze in the forefranch of the rudder, and we make Valencia, white, green-white, at a safe 7,000 feet, dipping our beam to an incoming Washington packet. There is no cloud on the Atlantic, and faint streaks of cream round Dingle Bay show where the driven seas hammer the coast. A big SAT-A-Liner, Serciete Anonymous de Transport Aureanne, is diving. and lifting half a mile below us in search of some break in the solid west wind. Lower still lies a disabled day.

She is telling the liner all about it in international. Our general communication dial has got her talk and begins to eavesdrop. Captain Hudson makes a motion to shut it off, but checks himself. Perhaps you'd like to listen, he says. Argoal of St. Thomas, the Dane whimpers. Report owners three starboard shaft collar bearings fused. Can make floris as we are, but impossible. further. Shall we buy spurs at Fayal? The liner acknowledges and recommends

inverting the bearings. The argyll answers that she has already done so without effect and begins to relieve her mind about cheap German enamel's for color bearings. The Frenchman ascends cordially, cries, Courage, mon ami, and switches off. Their lights sink under the curve of the ocean. That's one of Lundon-Blemyme's boats, says Captain Hudson, serves them right for putting German compost in their thrust blocks. She won't be in fail tonight. By the way, wouldn't you like to look around the engine room? I have been waiting eagerly for this invitation,

and I follow Captain Hudson from the control platform, stooping low to avoid the bulge of the tanks. We know that Fleury's gas can lift anything, as the world-famous trials of 89 showed, but its almost indefinite powers of expansion necessitate vast tank room. Even in this thin air, the lift shuns are busy taking out one-third of its normal lift, and still 162 must be checked by an occasional downdraw of the rudder, or our flight would become a climb to the stars.

Captain Pernell prefers an over-lifted to an under-lifted ship, but no two captains trim sheep alike. When I take the bridge, says Captain Hotson, you'll see me shunned 40% of the lift out of the gas and run her on the upper rudder. with a swoop upward instead of a swoop downward, as you say. Either way will do. It's only habit. Watch our dip dial.

Tim Fetchy sedan once every 30 knots as regularly as breathing. So is it shown on the deep dial. For five or six minutes the arrow creeps from 6,700 to 7,300. There is the faint G of the rudder and backslides the arrow to 6,000 on a falling slant of 10 or 15 knots. In heavy weather, you jockey. have with the screws as well, says Captain Hudson, and unslipping the jointed bar, which divides the engine room from the bare deck, he leads me on to the floor. Here we find Flurry's paradox of the bulk-headed vacuum, which we accept now without thought, literally in full blast. The three

engines are HD&T, assisted vacuum of flurry turbines running from 3,000 to the limit, that is to say up to the point when the blades make the air bell, cut out a vacuum for themselves precisely as overdriven marine propellers used to do. 162's limit is low on account of the small size of her nine screws, which, though handier than the old colloid thelisans, bell sooner. The midship's engine, generally used as a reinforced, is not running, so the port and starboard turbine vacuum chambers draw direct into the return mains. The turbines whistle reflectively. From the low arch expansion tanks on either side, the valves descent pillar-wise to the turbine chests, and thence the obedient gas whirls through the spirals of blades, with a force

that would whip the teeth out of a power-saw. Behind is its own pressure, held in leash, or spurred on by the lift shunts. Before it, the vacuum where Flourries-ray dances in violet-green bands and whirled turbulence of flame. The jointed you tubes of the vacuum chamber, or pressure-tempered colloid, no glass would endure the strain for an instant, and a junior engineer with tinted spectacles watches the ray intently. It is the very heart of the machine, a mystery to this day. Even Fleury, who begot it, and, unlike Manick, died a multimillionaire, could not explain how the restless little imp, shuddering in the YouTube,

can, in the fractional fraction of a second, strike the furious blast of gas into a chill, grayish-green liquid, that drains, you can hear it trickle from the far end of the vacuum through the adduction pipes and the mains back to the bilges. Here it returns to its gasses, one had almost written sagascious state and climbs to work afresh. Bilge tank, upper tank, dorsal tank, expansion chamber, vacuum, main return as a liquid, and bilge tank once more is the ordained cycle. Fleury's ray ceased to that, and the engineer with a tinted spectacles ceased to Fleury's ray. If a speck of oil, if even the natural grease of the human finger touched the hood its terminals, Floury's ray will wink and disappear and must be laboriously built up again.

This means half a day's work for all hands and an expense of 170-odd pounds to the GPO for radium salts and such trifles. Now look at our thrust colors. You won't find much German compel there. full jeweled, you see, says Katten Hodson, as the engineer shunts open the top of a cup. Our shaft bearings are CMC Commercial Minerals Company stones, crowned with as much care as the lens of a telescope. They cost 37 pounds apiece. So far we have not arrived at their term of life. These bearings came from number 97, which took them over from the old dominion of light,

which had them out of the wreck of the Persia's aeroplane in the years. when men still flew wooden kites over oil engines. They are a shining reproof to all low-grade German ruby enamels, so-called board-facings, and the dangerous and unsatisfactory alumina compounds which please dividend-hunting owners and turn skippers crazy. Their rudder gear and the gas lift shunt, seated side by side under the engine room dials,

are the only machines in visible motion. The former sighs from time to time as the oil plunger rises and falls half an inch. The latter, cased and guarded like the YouTube aft, exhibits another flurry ray, but inverted and more green than violet. Its function is to shunt the lift out of the gas, and this it will do without watching.

That is all. A tiny pump rod wheezing and whining to itself beside a sputtering green lamp, a hundred and fifty feet aft, down the flat-topped tunnel of the tanks, a violet light, restless and erected, between the two, three white painted turbine trunks, like eel baskets laid on their side, accentuate the empty perspectives. You can hear the trickle of the liquefied gas flowing from the vacuum

into the bilge tanks and the soft clock-glock of gas locks closing, as Captain Pernell brings 162 down by the head. The hem of the turbines and the boom of the air on our skin is no more than a cotton wool wrapping to the universal stillness, and we are running an 18-second I'll peer from the fore end of the engine room over the hatchcomings into the coach. The male clerks are sorting the Winnipeg, Calgary and medicine hatbags, but there is a pack of cards ready on the table. Suddenly, a bell thrills. The engineers run to the turbine valves and stand by. But the spectacled slave of the ray in the YouTube never lifts his head. He must watch where he is. We are heart-braked and going astern. There is language.

from the control platform. Teams sparking badly about something, says the unruffled Captain Hudson. Let's look. Captain Pernel is not the suave man we left half an hour seems, but the embodied authority of the GPO. Ahead of us floats an ancient aluminum-patched

twin-screw tram of the dinghist with no more ride to the 5,000-foot lane than has a horse cart to a modern road. She carries an obsolete barbed conning tower, a six-foot affair with railed platform forward, and our warning beam plays on the top of it as a policeman's lantern flashes on the area a sneak. Like a sneak thief too emerges a shock-headed navigator in his shirt sleeves. Captain Purnall, wrenches open the colloid to talk with him, man to man.

There are times when science does not satisfy. What under the stars are you doing here, you skyscraping chimney sweep? He shouts as we two drift side by side. Do you know this is a male lane? You call yourself a sailor, sir? you ain't fit to pedal toy balloons to an Eskimo. Your name and number. Report and get down and be...

I've been blown up once. The shock-headed man cries hoarsely as a dog barking. I don't care two flips of a contact for anything you can do, posty. Don't you, sir? But I'll make you care. I'll have you towed stern first to disco and broke up. You can't recover insurance if you're broke for obstruction. Do you understand that?

Then the stranger bellows. Look at my propellers. There's been a woollywa down below that has knocked us into umbrella frames. We've been blown up about 40,000 feet. We're all one conjurious watch inside. My mate's arms broke. My engineer's heads cut open.

My ray went out when the engine smashed and And for pity's sake, give me my height, Captain. We dad were dropping. 6,800. Can you hold it? Captain Pernel overlooks all insults, and leans half out of the colloid, staring and snuffing. The stranger leaks pungently. We ought to blow into St. John's with luck.

We're trying to plug the fortang now, but she's simply whistling it away, her captain wails. She's sinking like a log, says Captain Pernel in an undertone. Call up the bank's mark boat, George. Our dip dial shows that we, keeping abreast the trump, have dropped 500 feet the last few minutes. Captain Pernel presses a switch, and our signal beam begins to swing through the night,

twizzling spokes of light across infinity. That'll fetch something. He says, while Captain Hudson watches a general communicator. He has called up the North Bank's mark boat a few hundred miles west and is reporting the case. I'll stand by you, Captain Pernel roars to the lone figure on the conning tower. Is it as bad as that? Comes the answer.

She isn't insured. She's mine. Might have guessed as much, matters Hoddle. "'Oener's risk is the worst risk of all. "'Can't I fetch St. John's, not even with his breeze?' "'The voice quaver's. "'Send by to a badden ship. "'Haven't you any lift in you, for, or aft?

"'Nothing but the midship tanks, and they're none too tight. "'You see, my ray gave out and—' "'He coughs in the reek of the escaping gas. "'Your poor devil, this does not reach our friend. "'What does the mark boat say, George?' "'Wants to know if there are any danger to traffic. says she's in a bit of weather herself and can't quit station. I've turned in a general call, so even if they don't see our beam,

someone's bound to help, or else we must. Shall I clear our slings? Hold on, here we are. A planet liner too. She'll be up in a tick. Tell her to have her slings ready, cries his brother, Captain. There won't be much time to spare. Tie up your mate, he roars to the Trump.

My mate, all right, it's my engineer. He's gone crazy. Chunk the lift out of him with a spanner. Hurry. But I can make St. John's if you'll stand by. You'll make the deep wet Atlantic in 20 minutes. You're less than 5,800 now. Get your papers.

A planet liner, eastbound, heaves up in a superb spiral and takes the air of us humming. Her underbody colloid is open and her transported slings hang down like tentacles. We shut off our beam as she adjusts herself stirring to her hair over the trunk. conning tower. The maid comes up, his arms trapped to his side and stumbles into the cradle. A man with a ghastly scarlet head follows, shouting that he must go back and build up his ray.

The mate assures him that he will find a nice new ray already in the liner's engine room. The bandaged head goes up, walking excitedly. A youth and a woman follow. The liner cheers hollowly above us and we see the passenger's faces at the saloon colloid. That's a pretty girl. What's the fool waiting for now? Says Captain Pernell. The skipper comes up, still appealing to us to stand by and see him fetch St. John's. He dives below and returns, at which we, little human beings in the void, cheer louder than ever, with a sheep's kitten. Up fly the liner's hissing slings. Her underbody crushes home and she hurtles away again. The dial shows less than three thousand. The markboat signals we must attend to the derelict, now whistling her death song as she falls beneath us in long, sick zigzags.

Keep our beam on her and send out a general warning, says Captain Pernel following her down. There is no need. Not a linery nerve but knows the meaning of that vertical beam and gives us and our quarry a wide berth. But she'll drown in the water, won't she, I ask? Not always, is his answer. I've known a derelict up end and sift her engines out of herself and flick around the lower lanes for three weeks on her forward stanks only. We'll run no risks. Peathe here, George, and look sharp. There's weather ahead.

Captain Hudson opens the underbody colloid, swings the heavy peathing iron out of its rock, which in liners is generally cased as a smoking room set he, and at 200 feet releases the catch. We hear the wear of the crescent-shaped arms opening, as the lineers. they descend. The derelict's forehead is punched in, start across and rent diagonally. She falls stern first, our beam upon her, slides like a lot of soul, down that pitiless ladder of light, and the Atlantic takes her. A filthy business, says Hudson. I wonder what it must have been like in the old days. The thought had crossed my mind, too. What if that wavering carcass had been filled with the men of the old days? Each one of them.

taught, that is the horror of it, that after death he would very possibly go forever to unspeakable torment. And scarcely generation ago we, one knows now that we are only our fathers re-enlarged upon the earth, we, I say, ripped and rammed and peased to admiration. Here, Tim, from the control platform, shouts that we are to get into our inflators and to bring him he is at once. We hurry into the heavy rubber suits. The engineers are already dressed, and inflate at the air pump taps. GPO inflators are thrice as thick as a racing man's flickers, and chafe abominably under the armpits. George takes the wheel until Tim has blown himself up to the extreme of rotundity. If you kicked him off the CP to the deck, he would bounce back,

but it is 162 that will do the kicking. The Markboats mad. Stark raving crazy! He snorts, returning to command. She says there's a bad blowout ahead and wants me to pull over to Greenland. I'll see her peathed first. We wasted half an hour fussing over that dead duck down under, and now I'm expected to go rubbing my back all around the pole. What does she think a postal packet's made of? Gumped silk?

Tell her we're coming on straight, George. George buckles him into the frame and switches on the direct control. Now, under Tim's left toe, lies the port engine accelerator. under his left heel the reverse and so with the other foot the lift shant's tops stand out on the rim of the steering wheel where the fingers of his left hand can play on them at his right hand is the Med Ship's engine lever ready to be thrown into gear at a moment's notice he leans forward in his belt eyes glued to the colloid and one ear cocked toward the general communicator henceforth he is the strength and direction of 162 through whatever may be full the bank's

boat is reeling out pages of ABC directions to the traffic at large. We are to secure all loose objects, hood up our flurry rays, and on no account to attempt to clear snow from our conning towers till the weather abates. Under powered craft, we are told, can ascend to the limit of their lift, mail packets to look out for them accordingly. The lower lanes westward are pitting very badly, with frequent blowouts, vortices, laterals, etc. Still, the clear dark holds up unblemished.

The only warning is the electric skin tension. I feel as though I wear a lacemakers' pillow and an irritability which the gibbering of the general communicator increases almost to hysteria. We have made 8,000 feet since we peeped the trump and our turbines are giving us an honest 210 knots. Very far to the west, an elongated blur of red, low down, shows us the north bank, Markboat. There are specks of fire around her rising and falling, bewilder planets around an unstable sun, helpless shipping, hanging on to her light for company's sake. No wonder she could not quit

station. She warns us to look out for the backwash of the bad vortex in which her beam shows it. She is even now reeling. The pits of gloom about us begin to fill with very faintly luminous films reeling and uneasy shapes. One forms itself into a globe of pale, flame that weights shivering with eagerness till we sweep by. It leaps monstrously across the blackness, alights on the precise tip of our nose, pirouettes there an instant, and swings off. A roaring bow sings as though that light were led, sings and recovers to large and stumble again beneath the next blowout. Tim's fingers on the lift shunt strike chords of numbers. 147, 247, 246, 7-5-3, and so on, for he is running by his tanks only, lifting or lowering her against the uneasy air.

All three engines are at work, for the sooner we have skated over this thin ice, the better. Higher we dare not go. The whole upper vault is charged with pale krypton vapors, which our skin friction may excite to unholy manifestations. Between the upper and lower levels, 5,000 and 7,000 hints the markboat, we may perhaps bolt through, if. Our bow clothes itself in blue flame and falls like a sword. No human skill can keep base with a changing tensions. A vortex has us by the beak and we dive down a 2,000 foot slant at an angle, the deep dial and my bouncing body recorded, of 35. Our turbines scream shrielly.

The propellers cannot bite on the thin air. Team shunts the lift out of five tanks at once and by sheer weight drives her bullet-wise through the Melstrom, till she cushions with a jar on an upgust, 3,000 feet below. Now we've done it, says George in my ear. Our skin friction, that last slide, has played old Harry with the tensions. Look out for laterals, team, she'll want some holding. I've got her, is the answer. Come up, old woman.

She comes up nobly, but the laterals buffered her left and right, like the pinions of angry angels. She is jolted off her course four ways at once and cuffed into place again, only to be swung aside and dropped into a new chaos. We are never without a corpusent greening on our bows, or rolling head over hills from nose to midships, and to the crackle of electricity around and within us

is added once or twice the rattle of hail, hail that will never fall on any sea. Slow we must, or we may break our back, pitch-polling. "'Air's a perfectly elastic fluid,' rose George above the tumult. "'About as elastic as a head see off the fastenet, ain't it? "'He is less than just to the good element. "'If one intrudes on the heavens when they are balancing their vault accounts, "'if one disturbs the high God's market rates

"'by hurling steel hulls at 90 knots "'acrossed, tremblingly adjusted electric tensions, "'one must not complain of any rudeness in the reception.' "'Tim met it with an unmoved countenance. one corner of his under lip caught up on a tooth, his eyes fleeting into the blackness twenty miles ahead, and the fierce sparks flying from his knuckles at every turn of the hand. Now and again he shook his head to clear the sweat trickling from his eyebrows, and it was then that George, watching his chance, would slide down the life rail

and swab his face quickly with a big red handkerchief. I never imagined that a human being could so continuously labor and so collectively think as did tim, through that hell's half-hour when the flurry was at its worst. We were dragged hither and yon by warm or frozen sanctions, belched up on the tops of woollywass, spanned down by vortices,

and clobbed aside by laterals under a dizzying rush of stars in the company of a drunken moon. I heard the rushing click of the midship engine lever sliding in and out, the low growl of the lift shunts, and louder than the yelling winds without,

the scream of the scream of the, the bow-ruder gouging into any lull that promised hold for an instant. At last we began to claw up on a cant, bow-rador and port-propeller together. Only the nicest balancing of tanks saved us from spinning like the rifle-bullet of the old days. We've got to hitch to windward of that markboat somehow, George cried. There's no windward, I protested feebly, where I swung shackled to extension. How can there be? He laughed. As we reached into a thousand-fetched into a thousand foot blowout, that red man laughed beneath his inflated hood. Look, he said, we must clear those refugees with a high lift.

The mark boat was below, and a little to the southwest of us, fluctuating in the center of her distraught galaxy. The air was thick with moving lights at every level. I take it most of them were trying to lie ahead to wind, but not being hydrous, they failed. An under-tanked Moograbby boat had reason to the limit of her lift, and find ending no improvement had dropped a couple of thousand. There she met a superb Uliwa and was blown up spinning like a dead leaf. Instead of shutting off, she went astern and naturally rebounded, as from her wall, almost into the mark-boat, whose language, our

G.C. took it in, was humanly simple. If they'd only write it out quietly, it would be better, said George in a calm, while we climbed like a bat above them all. But some skippers will navigate without enough lift. What does that tadbo think she's doing, Tim? Playing kiss in the ring, was Tim's unmoved reply. A trans-asiatic direct liner had found a smooth and butted into it full power. But there was a vortex at the tail of that smooth, so the TAD was flipped out like a pee from off a fingernail, breaking madly as she fled down and all but over-ending. Now I hope she's satisfied, said Tim, I'm glad I'm not a mark boat. Do I want help? The general communicator dial had caught his ear. George,

you may tell that gentleman with my love. Love, remember George, that I do not want help. Who is the officious Sardine team? A Riemowski drogger on the lookout for a tow. Very kind of the Rimowski drugger. This postal packet isn't being towed at present. Those druggers will go anywhere on a chance of salvage, George explained. We call him Kitty Wakes. A long, bigged, still ninety-footer, floated at ease for one instant, within hail of us, her slings coiled ready for rescues, and a single hand in her open tower. He was smoking, surrendered to the insurrection of the airs through which he tore our way. He lay in absolute peace. I saw the smoke of his pipe a scent untroubled or his boat dropped. It seemed like a stone in a well.

He had just cleared the mark boat and her disorderly neighbors, when the storm ended, as suddenly as it had begun. A shooting star to northward filled the sky with a green blink of a meteorite, dissipating itself in her atmosphere, said George, that may iron out all the tensions. Even as he spoke, the conflicting winds came to rest. The levels filled. The laterals died out in long, easy swells. The airways were smoothed before us. In less than three minutes, the cavay around the markboat had shipped their power lights and weered away upon their businesses. "'What's happened?' I gasped. The nerve storm within, and the vault tingle without had passed.

My inflators weighed like lead. "'God, he knows,' said Captain George soberly. "'That old shooting star's skin friction has discharged the different levels. "'I've seen it happen before. "'Hugh, what a relief!' "'We dropped from ten to six thousand and got rid of our clammy suits. "'Team shut off and stepped out of the frame. "'The Markboat was coming up behind us.

He opened the colloid in that heavenly stillness and mopped his face. Hello, Williams, he cried. A degree or two out of station, ain't you? Maybe, was the answer from the markboat. I've had some company this evening. So I noticed. Wasn't that quite a little draft? I warned you.

Why didn't you pull out north? The eastbound packets have. Me? Not till I'm running a polar consumptive sanatorium boat. I was squinting through a colloid before you were out of your cradle, my son. I'd be the last man to deny it, the captain of the Markbot replied softly. The way

you handled her just now? I'm a pretty fair judge of traffic in a vault hurry. It was a thousand revolutions beyond anything even I've ever seen. Tim's back supples visibly to this oiling. Captain George, on the CP, wings and points to the portrait

of the singularly attractive maiden pinned up on Tim's telescope bracket above the steering wheel. I see. Holy and untouching do I see? There is some talk overhead of coming round to tea on Friday, a brief report of the Derlick's fate, and Sim volunteers as he descends. For an ABC man, young Williams, is less of a high-tension fool than some. Were you thinking of taking her on, George? Then I'll just have a look around that poured thrust. Seems to me it's a trifle warm, and we'll jog along.

The Markboat hums off joyously and hangs herself up in her appointed area. Here she will stay a shutterless observatory, a lifeboat station, a salvage dug, a court of ultimate appeal come meteorological bureau for 300 miles in all directions, till Wednesday next, when her relief slides across the stars to take her buffeted place. Her black hull, double-conning tower, and ever-ready slings represent all that remains to the planet of that old old word authority. She is responsible only to the aerial board of control, the ABC, of which team speaks so flippantly. But that semi-elected semi-nominated body

of a few score of persons of both sexes controls this planet, transportation is civilization, our motto runs. Theoretically, we do what we please so long as we do not interfere with the traffic, and all it implies. Practically, the ABC confirms or annuls all international arrangements, and, to judge from its last report,

finds our tolerant, humorous, lazy little planet only too ready to shift the whole burden of public administration on its shoulders. I discussed this with Tim, sipping Maté on the CP, while George fans here along over the white blur of the banks in beautiful upward curves of 50 miles each. The deep dial translates them on the tape in flowing free hand. Team gathers up a skein of it and surveys the last few feet, which record 162's path through the vault flurry.

I haven't had a fever chart like this to show up in five years, he says ruefully. A postal packet's deep dial records every yard of every run. The tapes then go to the ABC, which collates and makes composite photographs of them for the instruction of captains. Team studies his irrevocable past, shaking his head. Hello? Here's a 1500-foot drop at 55 degrees. We must have been standing on our heads then, George. You don't say so, George answers. I fancy I noticed it at the time.

George may not have Captain Pernell's cut-like swiftness, but he is all in artists to the tips of the broad fingers that play on the shunt stops. The delicious flight curves come away on the tape with never a waver. The markboat's vertical spindle of light lies down to eastward, setting in the face of the following stars. Westward, where no planet should be. rise, the triple verticals of Trinity Bay, we keep still to the southern route, make a low

lifting haze, we seem the only thing at rest under all the heavens, floating at ease, till the earth's revolution shall turn up our landing towers. And minute by minute our silent clock gives us a 16-second mile. Some fine night, says Tim, will be even with that clock's master. He's coming now, says George over his shoulder. I'm chasing the night-we, West. The stars ahead dim no more than if a film of mist had been drawn under unobserved, but the deep air boom on our skin changes to a joyful shout. The dawn gusts, says Tim, it'll go on to meet the sun. Look, look! There's a dark being cramped back over our boughs. Come to the after colloid, I'll show you something. The engine room is hot and stuffy. The

Clarks and the coach are asleep, and the slave of the rape is ready to follow them. Tim slides upon the aft colloid and reveals the curve of the world, the ocean's deepest purple, edged with fuming and intolerable gold. Then the sun rises and through the colloid strikes out our lumps. Tim scowls in his face. Squirrels in a cage, he mutters. That's all we are. Squirrels in a cage. He's going twice as fast as us.

Just you wait a few years, my shining friend, and we'll take steps that will amaze you. Will Joshua you? Yes, that is our dream, to turn all earth into the veil of age alone at our pleasure. So far we can drag out the dawn to twice its normal length in these latitudes. But some day, even on the equator, we shall hold the sun level in his full stride. Now we look down in a sea thronged with heavy traffic. A big submersible breaks water suddenly, another and another follows, with a swash and a sack and a savage bubbling of relieved pressures.

The deep sea freighters are rising to Lung Up after the long night, and the leisurely ocean is all patterned with Peacock's eyes of foam. We'll hang up too, says Tim, and when we return to the CP, George shuts off, the colloids are opened, and the fresh air sweeps you're out. There is no hurry, the old contracts, they will be revised at the end of the year, allow 12 hours for a run which any packet can put behind her in ten

so we breakfast in the arms of an easterly sland which pushes us along at a languid twenty to enjoy life and tobacco begin both on a sunny morning half a mile or so above the doubled Atlantic cloud belt and after a vault flurry which has cleared and tempered your nerves while we discuss the thickening traffic with a superiority that comes of having a high level reserved to ourselves

We heard, and I for the first time, the morning hymn on a hospital boat. She was cloaked by a skein of raveled fluff beneath us, and we caught the chant before she rose into the sunlight. O ye winds of God, sang the unseen voices, bless ye the Lord, praise him and magnify him forever. We slid off our caps and joined in. When our shadow fell across her great open platforms, They looked up and stretched out their hands neighborly while they sang.

We could see the doctors and the nurses and the white-button-like faces of the cot patients. She passes slowly beneath us, heading northward, her hull wet with the dews of the night, all ablaze in the sunshine. So took she the shadow of a cloud and vanished, her song continuing. O ye holy and humble men of heart, bless ye the Lord, praise him and magnify him forever. She's a public longer, or she wouldn't have been singing the Benedictic. And she's a Greenlander, or she wouldn't have snow blinds over her colloids, said George at last. She'll be bound for Frederick Chauvin or one of the glacier's sanatoriums for a month.

If she was an accident ward, she'd be hung up at the 8,000 foot level. Yes, consumptives. Funny how the new things are the old things. I've read in books, Tim answered, that savages used to hold the, are sick and wounded up to the tops of hills because microbes were fewer there. We hoist them into sterilized air for a while. Same idea. How much do the doctors say we've added to the average life of a man?

Thirty years, says George with a twinkle in his eye. Are we going to spend them all up here, Tim? Flap ahead, then, flap ahead. Who's hindering? The senior captain laughed as we went in. We held a good lift to clear the coastwise and continental shipping, and we had need of it. Though our route is in no sense a populated one, there is a steady trinkle of traffic this way along.

We met Hudson Bay furriers, out of the Great Preserve, hurrying to make their departure from Bonavista with sable and black fox for the insatiable markets. We overcrossed Kiwatin liners, small and cramped, but their captains, who see no land between Trapassi and Blanco, know what gold they bring back from West Africa. trans-Asiatic directs we met, soberly ringing the world around the 50th meridian, at an on at 70 knots, and white-patent acroid and hunt fruiters out of the south fled beneath us, their ventilated hulls whistling like Chinese kites. Their market is in the north, among the northern sanatoria,

where you can smell their grapefruit and bananas across the cold snows. Argentine beef boats, we cited too, of a northern... capacity and unlovely outline. They too feed the northern health stations in ice-bound ports where submersibles dare not rise. Yellow-bellied ore flats and un-gava petrol tanks punt it down leisurely out of the north, like strings of unflightened wild duck. It does not pay to fly minerals and oil a mile further than is necessary, but the risks of trans-shiping to submersibles in the ice-back of Nain or Hebron, are so great that these heavy freighters fly down to Halifax direct and send the air as they go.

They are the biggest trumps aloft except the Athabasca grain-tubs, but these last, now that the wheat is moved, are busy, over the world's shoulder, timber lifting in Siberia. We held to the St. Lawrence. It is astonishing how the old waterways still pull us children of the air and followed his broad line of black between its drifting ice blocks, all down the park that the wisdom of our fathers, but everyone knows the Quebec run. We dropped to the heights receiving towers 20 minutes ahead of time, and there hang at ease till the Oklahoma intermediate packet

could pull out and give us a proper sleep. It was curious to watch the action of the holding-down clips all along the Foster River front as the boats cleared or came to rest. A big hamburger was leaving Pontley Vise and her crew, and shipping the platform railings, began to sing Elsinor, the oldest of our chantes. You know it, of course. Mother Rugginsdy house on the Baltic, 40 couple waltzing on the floor.

And you can watch my ray, for I must go away, and dance with a Lasuan at Elsinor. Then, while they sweat at home the covering plates, No, nor, nor, nor, west from Surabai. to the Baltic, 90 not an hour to the scow. Mother Regenstee has on the Baltic, and to dance with Ella Swain at Elsinore. The clips parted with a gesture of indignant dismissal,

as though Quebec, glittering under her snows, were casting out this light and unworthy lovers. Our signal came from the heights. Tim turned and floated up, but surely then it was with passionate appeal that the Great Tower arms flung open, or did I think so because on the hour, staging, a little hooded figure also opened her arms wide toward her father.

In ten seconds the coach with its clerks clashed down to the receiving caisson. A holsters displaced the engineers at the idle turbines, and team, prouder of this than all, introduced me to the maiden of the photograph on the shelf. And by the way, said he to her, stepping forth in sunshine under the hat of civil life, I saw young Williams in the markboat. I've asked him to tea on Friday. Aerial Board of Control Lights

No changes in English inland lights for week ending December the 18th Cape Verde Week ending December the 18th Verde inclined guide light changes from first proximo to triple flash green white green in place of occulting red as heretofore The warning light for Haramatan winds

will be continuous vertical glare white on all oases of trans-Saharan northeast by east main routes. Invercargill, New Zealand, from first proxmo, extreme southerly light, double-red, will exhibit white beam inclined 45 degrees on approach on southerly buster. Traffic flies high off this coast between April and October. Table Bay Devil's Peak glare removed to Simonsburg. Traffic making Table Mountain coastwise, keep on.

all lights from three anchor bay, at least 2,000 feet under, and do not round to till east of east shoulder, devil's peak. Sandheads light. Green triple vertical marks new private landing stage for bay and Burma traffic only. Snaffle Jockel. Wide occulting light withdrawn for winter. Patagonia. Nor summer light south Cape Pillar.

This includes Staten Island and Port Stanley. Cape Navarine. Quadriple fork flash, white, one-minute intervals, new. East Cape, fork-flash, single-white with single-bomb, 30-second intervals, new. Malayan archipelago, lights unreliable owing eruptions. Lay from Cape Somerset to Singapore direct, keeping highest levels. For the board? Caterhan, St. Gist, Van Heeder, Lights.

Casualties. Week ending December 18th. Table Island. Green single-burbet Tower Freighter, number indistinguishable, upended and four-tank, pierced after collision, past 300 feet level 2 p.m. December the 15th, watched to water and peat by markboat. NF Banks. Postal Packet 162 reports Halma Frater Foui St. John's, abandoned, leaking after weather, 46 degrees 15 minutes north, 50 degrees 15 minutes west. Crew rescued by Planetliner Asteroid.

Watched to water and peated by postal packet December the 14th. Kerguelen. Mark Boat reports last call from Symena freighter, Geert Tong Hacken Company, taking water and sinking in snowstorms South McDonald's islands. No wreckage recovered. Messages and wills of crew at all ABC offices. Fezoned T. T.A.D. Freighter Ulema

taken ground during Harmaton on Aikaka's range. Underplates strained, crew at God were repairing December the 13th. Biscay, Markboat reports Carducci, Valendingham line, slightly spiked in western gorge, Pointe de Benasque. Passengers transferred Andorra, Fulton line, Barcelona Markboat solving cargo December the 12th. Ascension, Markboat, wreck of unknown racing plane, pardon rudder, wire, and, stiffened xalanite-night vans and harliss engine seating, cited and solved, 7 degrees 20 minutes south, 18 degrees 41 minutes west, December the 15th, photos at all ABC offices. Missing No answer to General Call having been received during the last week from following overduees, they are posted as missing.

Atlantis, West 17630, Canton Valparaiso. Out-humble, West 889, Sakholm, Odessa Berenice, West 2206, Riga, Vladivostok, Trey, East 446, Coventry, Punta Serenus, Tontin, East, 3068, Cape Rath, Ungava, Vusung, East, 41776, Hanco, Lobito Bay, General Call, Hall-Markboats, Out for, Jane Eyre, West, 699,

Port Rupert City of Mexico Santander West 55114 Gobi Desert Manila V Edmondson East 9690 Kandahar

Fume Broke for obstruction and quitting levels Valky Racing Plain A.J. Hartley owner New York twice warned Geisha Racing Plain

As Van Cod owner Philadelphia Twice warned Marvel of Peru, racing plane, J.X. Bejoto, owner, Rio de Janeiro, twice warned. For the board, Lazarev, Macav, Goldblad, traffic. Notes. High-level sleet. The northern weather so far shows no sign of improvement. From all quarters come complaints of the unusual prevalence of sleet at the higher levels. Racing planes and deeks alike have suffered severely, the former from unequal deposits of half-frozen sluble.

on their bands, and only those who have held up a badly balanced plane in a crosswind know what that means, and the latter from loaded bows and snow-cased bodies. As a consequence, the northern and northwestern upper levels have been practically abandoned, and the high flyers have returned to the ignoble security of the three, five and six hundred foot levels. But there remains a few undaunted sun-hunters who, in spite of frozen stays and ice-jumped connecting rods still haunt the blue Empyrean. Batboat racing.

The scandals of the past few years have at last moved the yachting world to concerted action in regard to the bad boat racing. We have been treated to the spectacle of what are practically keeled racing planes driven a clear five foot or more above the water and only eased down to touch their so-called native element as they near the line. Judges and starters have been conveniently blind to this absurdity, but the public demonstration of St. Catherine's light at the autumn regattas has borne ample, if tardy, fruit. In the future the bad is to be a boat, and the long unhitted demand of the true sportsmen

for no daylight under midkill in smooth water is in a fair way to be conceded. The new rule severely restricts plain area and lift alike. compartments are permitted both for and aft as in the old type but the water ballast central tank is rendered obligatory. These things work if not for perfection at least for the evolution of a sane and wholesome waterborne cruiser. The type of rudder is unaffected by the new rules so we may expect to see the Long Davidson make the patent and which has expired come largely into use hence forward though the strain on the stern post in turning its speeds over 40 miles

miles an hour is admittedly very severe, but bad boat racing has a great future before it. Crete and the ABC The story of the recent Cretan crisis, as told in the ABC Monthly Report, is not without humor. Till the 25th of October, Crete, as all our planet knows, was the sole surviving European repository of autonomous institutions, local self-government, and the rest of the archaic lumber devised in the past for the confusion of human affairs. She has lived practically on the tourist traffic attracted by her annual pageants of parliaments, boards, municipal councils, etc, etc.

Last summer, the islanders grew weary, as their premier explained, of playing at being savages for pennies, and proceeded to pull down all the landing towers on the island and shut off general communication till such time, as the ABC should annex them. For side-splitting comedy, we would refer our readers to the correspondence

between the Board of Control and the Cretan Premier during the war. However, all's well that ends well. The A.B.C. have taken over the administration of Crete on normal lines,

and tourists must go elsewhere to witness the debates, resolutions and popular movements of the old days. The only people to suffer will be the Board of Control, which is grievously overworked already. It is easy enough to condemn the Cretans for the laziness, but when one recalls the large,

prosperous and presumably public-spirited communities which during the last few years have deliberately thrown themselves into the hands of the ABC, one cannot be too hard upon St. Paul's old friends. Correspondence Skylarking on the equator. To the editor Only last week, while crossing the equator, West 2615, I became aware of a few and irregular cannonading, some 15 or 20 knots south, four east.

Descending to the 500 feet level, I found a party of Transylvanian tourists engage in exploding scores of the largest pattern-atmospheric bombs, ABC standard, and in the intervals of their pleasing labors, firing bow and stern smoke-ring swivels. This orgy, I can give it no other name, went on for at least two hours and naturally produced violent electric derangements. My compasses, of course, were thrown out, my bow was struck twice, and I received two risk shocks from the lower platform rail.

On remonstrating, I was told that these professors were engaged in scientific experiments. The extent of their scientific knowledge may be judged by the fact that they expected to produce, I give their own words, a little blue sky, if they went on long enough. this in the heart of the doldrums at 450 feet. I have no objection to any amount of blue sky in its proper place. It can be found at the 4,000 level for practically 12 months out of the year, but I submit, with all deference to the educational needs of Transylvania,

that sky-larking in the centre of a main travelled road, where, at the best of times, electricity literally drips off one's stanchions and screw blades is unnecessary. When my friends had finished, the road was seared and blown, and pitted with unequal pressure layers, piles, vortices, and readjustments for at least an hour. I pitched badly twice in an upward rush solely due to these diabolical throwdowns that came near to wrecking my propeller. Equatorial work, at low levels, is trying enough, in all conscience without the added terrors of

scientific hooliganism in the doldrums. Aril, J. Vincent Muthon. We entirely sympathize with Professor Muffin's views, but still the board sees fit to further regulate the southern areas in which scientific experiments may be conducted, we shall always be exposed to the risk which our correspondent describes. Unfortunately, a chimera bombinating in a vacuum is nowadays only too capable of producing secondary causes.

Editor Answers to Correspondence to Correspondence. vigilance. The laws of auroral derangements are still imperfectly understood. Any overheated motor may, of course, cease without warning, but so many complaints have reached us of accidents similar to yours while shooting the Aurora, that we are inclined to believe, with Laval, that the upper strata of the Aurora borealis are practically one big electric leak, and that the paralysis of your engines was due to complete magnetization. of all metallic parts.

Low-flying planes often glue up when near the magnetic pole, and there is no reason in science where the same disability should not be experienced in higher levels when the auroras are delivering strongly. Indignant. On your own showing, you were not under control, that you could not hoist the necessary NUC lights and approaching a traffic lane because your electrics had short-circuited

is a misfortune, which might befall anyone. The ABC, being responsible for the planet's traffic, cannot, however, make allowance for this kind of misfortune. A reference to the code will show that you were fined on the lower scale. Planniston 1. The 5,000 kilometer, overland, was won last year by L.V. Roach. R.M. Roach, his brother, in the same week, pulling off the 10,000, over sea. R.M.'s average worked out at a fraction over 500 kilometers per hour, thus constituting a record. occurred. Two, theoretically, there is no limit to the lift of a dirigible. For commercial and practical purposes, 15,000 tons is accepted as the most manageable. Pater Familias

none whatever. He is liable for direct damage both to your chimneys and any collateral damage caused by fall of bricks into garden, et cetera, et cetera. Bodyly inconvenience and mental anguish may be included, but the average courts are not, as a rule, swayed by sentiment. If you can prove that his grapnel removed any portion of your roof, you had better rest your case on the coverture of domicile. See Parkinson's v. Dubelais. We sympathize with your position, but the night of the 14th was stormy and confused,

and you may have to anchor on a stranger's chimney yourself some night. Verbums up. Aldebaran 1. War, as a paying concern, ceased in 1967. 2. The Convention of London expressly reserves to every nation the right of waging war, so long as it does not interfere with the traffic and all that implies. 3. The ABC was constituted in 1949.

L.M.D. 1. Keep your full head-on and half-power, taking advantage of the lulls to speed up and creep into it. She will strain much less this way than in quartering across a gale. 2. Nothing is to be gained by reversing into a following gale, and there is always risk of a turnover. 3. The formulae for stencil breaks are uniformly unreliable, and will continue to be so as long as air is compressible. Pegamoid 1. Personally, we prefer glass or flux compounds to any other material for winter work nose caps as being absolutely non-higroscopic. 2. We cannot recommend any particular make. pulmoner. 1. For the symptoms you describe, try the Gobi Desert Sanatoria. The low levels of most of the Saharan sanatoria are against them except at the outset of the disease.

2. We do not recommend boarding houses or hotels in this column. Beginner, on still days the air above a large inhabited city, being slightly warmer, i.e. thinner than the atmosphere of the surrounding country, a plane drops a little on entering the rarefied area. Precisely as a ship sinks a little in fresh water, hence the phenomena of jolt and your inexplicable collisions with factory chimneys. In air, as an earth, it is safest to fly high. Emergency. There is only one rule of the road in air, earth and water. Do you want the firmament to yourself? Piquilla. Both poles have been overdone in art and literature. Leave them to science for the next 20 years. You did not.

sent a stump with your verses. North Nigeria. The Mark boat was within her ride. In warning you off the reserve, the shadow of a low-flying dirigible scares the game. You can buy all the photos you need at Sokoto. New Era. It is not

etiquette to overcross an ABC official's boat without asking permission. He is one of the body responsible for the planet's traffic and for that reason must not be interfered with. You, presumably, are out on your own business or pleasure. and must leave him alone.

For humanity's sake, don't try to be democratic. Excoriated. All inflators chafe sooner or later, you must go on till your skin hardens by practice. Meanwhile, Vaseline. Review. The life of Xavier Laval. Reviewed by Renet Alon,

a cool ironotic Paris. Ten years ago, Laval, that imperturbable dreamer of the heavens, as Lazarev hailed him, gathered together the fruits of a lifetime's labor and gave it, with well-justified contempt, to a world-bound hand and foot, to borrowed theory of vertices, and compensating electric nodes. They shall see, he wrote, in that immortal postscript to the heart of the cyclone,

the laws whose existence they derided written in fire beneath them. But even here, he continues, there is no finality. Better a thousand times my conclusion should be discredited, than that my dead name should lie across the threshold of the Temple of Science, a bar to further inquiry. So died Laval, a prince of the powers of the air, and even at his funeral, Salier gestated him who had gone to discover the secrets of the Aurora Borealis. If I choose thus to be banal, it is only to remind you that Selier's theories are today

as exploded as the ludicrous deductions of the Spanish school. In the place of their fugitive and warring dreams, we have, definitely, Laval's Lowe of the Cyclone, which he surprised in darkness and cold at the foot of the overarching throne of the Aurora Borales. It is there that I, intent on my own investigations, have passed and repassed a hundred times the worn Leonine face white as the snow beneath him, furrowed with wrinkles like the seams and gushes upon the North Cape. the nervous hand, integrally a part of the mechanism of his flighter, and above all, the wonderful lumbent eyes turned to the zenith.

Master, I would cry, as I moved respectfully beneath him, what is it you seek today? And always the answer clear and without doubt from above. The old secret, my son, the immense agitism of youth forced me on my own path, but, cry of the human always, had I known, if I had known, I would. would many times have bartered my poor laurels for the privilege such as tinsley and herera possess of having aided him in his monumental researches it is to the filial piety of victor laval that we owe the two volumes consecrated to the grand life of his father so full of the holy intimacies of the domestic hearth once returned from the abysms of the utter north to the little house upon the outskirts of meuden it was not the philosopher the daring observer the of iron energy that imposed himself on his family, but a fat and even plaintive jester, a far surer incarnate and kindly the co-equal of his children, and it must be written, not seldom the calming despair of Madame Laval, who, as she writes five years after the

marriage to her vulnerable mother, found in this unequalled intellect whose name I bear the abandon of a large and very untidy boy. Here is her letter. Xavier returned from I not know where at midnight, absorbed in calculations on the eternal question of his aurora, La Belle Aurora, whom I begin to hate. Instead of anchoring, I had set out the guide light above a roof so he had but to descend and fasten the plain, he wandered, profoundly distracted above the town with his anchored down. Figure to yourself, dear mother, it is the roof of the mayor's house that the Grapnel first engages. That, I do not regret. For For the mayor's wife and I are not sympathetic.

But when Xavier uproats my pet arrow carrier and bears it across the garden into the conservatory, I protest at the top of my voice. Little Victor in his nightclothes runs to the window, enormously mused at the parabolic flight without reason, for it is too dark to see the grapnel of my prized tree. The mayor of Muden thunders at our door in the name of the law, demanding, I suppose, my husband's head. Here is a conversation through the megaphone.

Xavier is 200 feet above us. Monsieur Laval, descend and make reparation for outrage of domicile. Descend Monsieur Laval. No one answers. Xavier Laval, in the name of the law, descend and submit to process for outrage of domicile. Xavier roused from his calculations, comprehending only the last words. Outrage of domicile? My dear mayor, who is the man that has corrupted thy Julie?

The mayor furious. Xavier Laval! Xavier interrupting. I have not that felicity. I am only a dealer in cyclones. My faith, he raised one then. All Muden attended in the streets. And my Xavier, after a long time comprehending what he had done,

excused himself in a thousand apologies. At last the reconciliation was affected in our house over a supper at two in the morning. Julie, in a wonderful costume of compromises, and I have her and the mayor, pacified in bed in the blue room. And on the next day, while the mayor rebuilds his roof, Eric Xavier departs anew for the Aurora Borealis, there to commence his life's work. Monsieur Victor Laval tells us of that historic collision, on the flank of Hecler between Herrera,

then a pillar of the Spanish school, and the man destined to confute his theories and lead him intellectually captive. Even through the years, the immense laugh of Laval, as he sustains the Spaniards erect plane and cries, Courage, I shall not fall till I have found truth, and I hold you fast, rings like the call of trumpets. This is that Laval whom the world, immersed in speculations of immediate gain, did not know nor suspect,

the Laval whom they adjudged to the last, a pedant, and a theorist. The human, as apart from the scientific side, developed in his own volumes, of his epoch-making discoveries, is marked with a simplicity, clarity and good sense beyond praise. I would specially refer such as doubt the sustaining influence of unsexual faith upon character and will to the 11th and 19th chapters in which are contained the opening and consummation of the telurionical records

extending over nine years. Of their tremendous significance, be sure that the modest house at Muden knew as little as that the records would one day be the planet's standard in all official meteorology. It was enough for them that their Xavier, this son, this father, this husband, ascended periodically to commune with powers, it might be angelic, beyond their comprehension,

and that they united daily in prayers for his safety. Pray for me, he says upon the eve of each of his excursions, and returning, with an equal simplicity, he renders thanks, after supper in the little room where he kept his barometers. To the last, Lovall was a good, Catholic of the old school, accepting he who had looked into the very heart of the lightnings, the dogmas of papal infallibility, of absolution, of confession, of relics great and small,

marvelous, enviable contradiction. The completion of the telurionical records closed to what Laval himself was pleased to call the theoretical side of his labors, labors from which the youngest and least impressionable planur might well have shrunk. He had to have traced through cold and heat across the dips of the oceans with instruments of his own invention over the inhospitable heart of the polar ice and the sterile visage of the deserts, league by league, patiently, unweariedly, remorselessly, from their ever-shifting cradle under the magnetic pole to their exalted deathbed in the utmost ether of the upper atmosphere, each one of the isoconic tellurians, Laval's curves, as we call them today.

He had disentangled the nodes of their intersections assigning to each its regulated period of flux and reflux. Thus equipped, he summons Herrera intensely, his pupils, to the final demonstration as calmly as though he were ordering his flighters for some midday journey to Marseille. I have proved my thesis, he writes, it remains now on. only that you should witness the proof. We go to the Manila tomorrow. A cyclone will form of the Pescadours, South 17 East, in four days, and will reach its maximum intensity

27 hours after inception. It is there I will show you the truth. A letter heretofore unpublished from Herrera to Madame Laval tells us how the master's prophecy was verified. I will not destroy its simplicity or its significance by any attempt to quote. Note well, though, that Herrera's preoccupation throughout that day and night of superhuman strain

is always for the master's bodily health and comfort. At such a time, he writes, I forced the master to take the broth, or, I made him put on the fur coat, as you told me. Nor is Tinsley, see pages 184-85, less concerned, he prepares the nourishment, he cooks eternally, imperturbably, suspended in the chaos of which the master interprets the meaning. Thincely, bowed down with the laurels of both hemispheres,

raises himself to get nobler heights in his capacity of a devoted chef. It is almost unbelievable, and yet men write of the master as called, aloof, self-contained. Such characters do not elicit the joyous and unswerving devotion which Laval commanded throughout life. Truly, we have changed very little in the course of the ages. The secrets of earth and sky and the links that bind them, we felicitate ourselves we are on the road to discover, but our neighbours heart and mind we misread, we misjudge, we condemn, now as ever. Let all then, who love a man, read this most human, tender and wise volumes. End of Section 7.

of actions and reactions. This is a Librivox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Cornell Nemesh in Reno, Nevada. Actions and Reactions by Rudyard Kipling.

The four angels. As Adam lay a dreaming beneath the apple tree, the angel of the earth came down and offered earth in fee. But Adam did not need it, nor the plow he would not spit it. singing earth and water, air and fire, what more can mortal men desire? The apple trees in bud.

As Adam lay a dreaming beneath the apple tree, the angel of the waters offered all the seas in fee. But Adam, would not take him, nor the ships he wouldn't make them. Singing, water, earth, and air and fire, what more can mortal men desire? The apple trees in leaf. As Adam lay a dreaming beneath the apple tree,

the angel of the air, he offered all, the air in fee. But Adam did not crave it, nor the flight he wouldn't brave it, singing air and water, earth and fire, what more can mortal men desire? The apple trees in bloom. As Adam lay a dreaming beneath the apple tree, the angel of the fire rose up and not a word, said he. But he wished a fire and made it. And in Adam's heart he laid it, singing, fire, fire, burning fire, stand up and reach your heart's desire.

The apple blossom set. As Adam was a working outside of Eden wall, he used the earth, he used the seas, He used the air and all And out of black disaster He arose to be the master of earth And water Air and fire But never reached

His heart's desire The apple trees cut down. End of Section 8. Recording by Cornell Nemesh in Reno, Nevada. Section 9 of Actions and Reactions. This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain.

For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. Recording by Navi. Actions and Reactions by Rudyard Kipling A Deal in Cotton Long and long ago, when Davidetta was king of Benares, I wrote some tales concerning Strickland of the Punjab police who married Miss Yugo and Adam, his son.

Strickland has finished his Indian service and lives now at a place in England called Western Supermare, where his wife plays the organ in one of the churches. Somey occasionally he comes up to London, and occasionally his wife makes him visit his friends. Otherwise, he plays golf and follows the Harriers for his figure's sake. If you remember that infant who told the tale to Eustace Cleaver, the novelist, you will remember that he became a baronet with the vast estate. He has, owing to cookery, a little lost his figure, but he never loses his friends.

I have found a wing of his house turned into a hospital for sick men, and there I once spent a week in the company of two dismal nurses and a specialist in Sprew. Another time the place was full of schoolboys, sons of Anglo-Indians whom the infant had collected for the holidays, and they nearly broke his keeper's heart. But my last visit was better. The infant called me up by wire, and I fell into the arms of a friend of mine, Colonel A. L. Corcoran, so that the years departed from us, and we praised Allah, who had not yet terminated the lights, nor separated the companions. Said Corkren, when he had explained how it felt to

command a native infantry regiment on the border, the Stricks are coming for two night with their boy. I remember him, the little fellow I wrote a story about. I said, is he in the service? No, Strick got him into the Central Euro-Africa Protectorate. He's assistant commissioner ad dupe, wherever that is. So Molliland, ain't it Stokie? That's the infant. Stalky puffed out his nostrils scornfully. You're only 3,000 miles out. Look at the Atlas. Anyhow, he's as rotten full of fever as the rest of you, said the infant at length on the big divan, and he's bringing a native servant with him. Stocky be an athlete and tell Ips to put him in the stable room. Why, is he a Yao, like the fellow Wade brought here when your housekeeper had fits? Stalky often visits the

infant and has seen some odd things. No, he's one of old Strickland's Punjabi policeman, and quite European, I believe. Hooray! Haven't talked Punjabi for three months, and a Punjabi from Central Africa ought to be amusing. We heard the chuff of the motor in the porch, and the first to enter was Agnes Strickland, whom the infant makes no secret of adorn. He is devoted, in a fat man's placid way,

to at least eight designing women. But she nursed him once through a bad bout of patient-war fever, and when she is in the house, it is more than all her. hers. You didn't send rug shenuff, she began. Adam might have taken a chill. It's quite warm in the tunnel. Why did you let him ride in front? Because he wanted to, she replied, with a mother's smile, and we were introduced to the shadow of a young man leaning heavily on the shoulder of a bearded Punjabi Muhammadan. That is all that came home of him, said his father to me. There was nothing in it of the child with whom I had journeyed to Da Housy centuries since. And what is this uniform?

storm. Stocky asked of Imam Din, the servant, who came to attention on the marble floor, the uniform of the protectorate troub, though I am a little Sahib's body servant, it is not seemly for us white men to be attended by folk dressed altogether as servants. And you white men wait at table on horseback? Stalky pointed to the man spurs. These I added for the sake of honor when I came to England, said Imam Din. Adam smiled the ghost of a little smile that I began to remember, and we put him on the big couch for refreshments. Stalky asked him how much leave he had, and he said six months. But he'll take another six on medical certificate, said Agnes anxiously.

Adam knit his brows. You don't want to, eh? I know. Wonder what my second in command is doing. Stockie tugged his mustache and fell to thinking of his Sikhs. Ah, said the infant, I have only a few thousand peasants to look after. come along and dress for dinner, or just ourselves, what flower is your honors ladyship commanding for the table?

Just ourselves, she said, looking at the crotons in the great hall, then let's have marigolds, the little cemetery ones. So it was ordered. Now, marigoles to us mean hot weather, discomfort, parting, and depth. That smell in our nostrils and Adam's servant in waiting, we naturally fell back more and more on the old slang, recalling at each glass those who had gone before. We did not sit at the big table, but in the bay window overlooking the park,

where they were carting the last of the hay. When twilight fell, we would not have candles, but waited for the moon, and continued our talk in the dusk that makes one remember. Young Adam was not interested in our past, except where he had touched his future. I think his mother held his hand beneath the table. Imam Dinh, Shulis, utter respect to the floors, brought him his medicine, put it drop by drop, and asked for order. Wait to take him to his cot when he was weary, said his mother, and him all then retired into the shadow by the ancestral portraits.

Now, what do you expect to get out of your country? the infant asked, when our India laid aside, we talked Adams Africa. It roused him at once. Rubber, nuts, gums, and so on, he said, but our real future is cotton. I grew 50 acres of it last year in my district. My district, said his father. Here him, mummy. I did do. though, I wish I could show you the sample. Some Manchester sap said it was good as any sea island cotton on the market. But what made you a cotton planter, my son? she asked. My chief said every man ought to have a shook, a hobby, of sorts, and he took the trouble to ride a day out of his way

to show me a belt of black soil that was just a thing for cotton. Ah, what was your chief like, stocky asked, in his silkiest tones? The best man alive, absolutely. He lets you blow your own nose yourself. The people call him. Adam jerked out some heathen phrase. That means the man with a stone eyes, you know. I'm glad of that, because I've heard from other quarters.

Stocky's sentence burned like a slow match, but the explosion was not long delayed. Other quarters! Adam threw out a thin hand. Every dog has his fleas. If you listen to them, of course. The shake of his head was as I remembered it among his father's policeman 20 years before, and his mother's eyes shining through the dusk called on me to adore it. I kicked stocky on the shin.

One must not mock a young man's first love or loyalty. A lump of raw cotton appeared on the table. I thought there might be a need. Therefore, I packed it between our shirts, said the voice of Imam Din. Does he know as much English as that? Because of the infant who had forgotten his east? We all admire the cotton for Adam's sake, and indeed it was very long and glossy. It's only an experiment, he said.

We're such awful paupers we can't even pay for a mail cart in my district. We use a biscuit box on two bicycle views. I only got the money for that, he patted the stuff by a pure fluke. How much does it cost? asked Strickland, with seed and machinery, about 200 pounds. I had the labor done by cannibals. That sounds promising. Stocky reached for a fresh cigarette. No thank you, said Agnes.

I've been at Weston's Supermare a little too long for cannibals. I'll go to the music room and try over next Sunday's hymns. She looked at the boy's hand lightly to her lips and tripped across the acres of glimmering floor to the music room that had been the infant's ancestors' banqueting hall. Her gray and silver dress disappeared under the musician's gallery. Two electrics broke out, and she stood back against the lines of gilded pipes. There's an abominable self-playing attachment here, she called. Me, the infant answered, his napkin on his shoulder. That's how I play Parsifle.

I preferred the direct expression. Take it away, Ips. We heard old Ips skating obediently all over the floor. Now for the direct expression, said Stalky, and moved on the burgundy recommended by the faculty to enrich fewer thin blood. It's nothing much. Only the belt of cotton soil my chief showed me

ran right into the Shaysahaley country. We haven't been able to prove cannibalism against that tribe in the courts. But when a Shaysha Haley offers you four pounds of women's breast, tattoos, marks, and all, screw it up in a plantain leaf before breakfast, you naturally burned the villages before lunch, said Stalky. Adam shook his head.

No troops, he sighed. I told my chief about it, and he said we must wait till I chopped a white man. He advised me if I ever felt like it not to commit a barren fellow dishe, but to let the station helie do it. Then he could report, and then we could mop him up. Most tomorrow. That's how he got. Stalky quoted the name of a province won by just such a sacrifice.

Yes, but the beast dominated one end of my cotton belt like anything. They chivied me out of it when I went to take soil for analysis, me and Imam Dinn. Sahib, is there a need? The voice came out of the darkness, and the eyes shone over Adam's shoulder ere it ceased. None, the name was taken and talked. Adam abolished him with a turn of the finger. I couldn't make a caissous belly out of it just then. because my chief had taken all the troops to hammer a gang of slave kings up north.

Did you ever hear of our war against Ibn Makara? He purchased nearly lost as a protector at one time, though he's an ally of ours now. Wasn't he a rather pernicious brute even as they go? said Stocky. Wade told me about him last year. Well, his nickname all through the country was the Merciful, and he didn't get that for nothing. None of our people ever breathed his proper name. They said he or that one, and they didn't say it aloud either. He fought us for eight months.

I remember, there was a paragraph about it in one of the papers, I said. We broke him, though. No, the slavers don't come our way because our men have the reputation of dying too much the first month after they're captured. That knocks down profits, you see. What about your charming friends? The Shayshaelie, said the infant. There's no market for Shayshaelie.

people would as soon buy crocodiles. I believe, before we annexed the country, Ibn Makara had dropped down on him once to train his young men, and simply hewed him in pieces. The bulk of my people are agriculturist, just the right stamp for cotton growers. What's mother playing? Once in Royal?

The organ that had been crooning as happily as a woman over her babe restored, studied to a tune. Magnificent, oh magnificent, said the infant loyally. I had never heard him sing but once, and then, though it was early in the tolerant morning, his mess had rolled him into a loaves pond. How did you get your cannibos to work for you? asked Strickland. They got converted to civilization after my chief smashed Ibn Makara, just at the time I wanted them. You see, my chief had promised me in writing that if I could scrape up a surplus,

he would not bag it for his rose this time, but I might have it for my cotton game. I only needed 200 pounds. Our revenues didn't run to it. What is your revenue, Stocky asked in the vernacular? With hut tax, traders' game, and mining licenses, not more than $14,000 rupees. Every penny of it earmarked months ahead, Adam sighed. Also, there's a fine for dog string in the Sahib's camp. Last year it exceeded three rupees, Imam Din said quietly. Well, I thought that was fair. They howled so.

We were rather strict on fines. I worked up my native clerk, Bulaki Ram, to a ferocious pitch of enthusiasm. He used to calculate the profits of our cotton scheme to three points of decimals after office. I tell you, I envied your magistrates here, hauling money out of motorists every week I had managed to make our ordinary revenue and expenditure just about me, and I was crazy to get the odd 200 pounds for my cotton. That sort of thing goes on a chat when he's alone, and talks aloud. Hello!

Have you been there already? The father said, and Adam nodded. Yes. Used to spout what I could remember of Marmian to a tree, sir. Well, then my luck turned. One evening, an English-speaking nigger came in toying a corpse by the feet. You get used to little things like that. He said he'd found it, and please would I identify, because if it was one of Ibn Makara's men, there might be a reward. It was an old Mohammedan, with a strong dash of Arab, a small-boned, bald-headed chap, and I was just wondering how it had kept so well in our

climate when it sneezed. You ought to have seen the nigger. He fetched a howl and bolted like the dog and Tom Sawyer when he sat on the what's-is-name beetle. He yelped as he ran and the corpse went on sneezing. I could see it had been sarkied. That's a sort of gum-poisoned pattern which attacks the nerve centers. Our chief medical officer is writing a monograph about it. So, Imam Dean and I emptied out the corpse one time with my shaving soap and trade gunpowder and hot water. I'd seen a case of Sarki before, so when the skin peeled off his feet and he stopped sneezing, I knew he'd live. He was bad, though, lay like a log for a week while Imam Din and I massage the paralysis out of him. Then he told us he was a haji, had been three times to Mecca,

come in from French Africa, and that he'd met the nigger by the wayside, just like a case of thuggy in India, and the nigger had poisoned him. That seemed reasonable enough. By what I knew of, of Coast niggers. You believed him? said his father keenly. There was no reason I shouldn't. The nigger never came back, and the old man stayed with me for two months, Adam returned. You know what the best type of a Mohammedan gentleman can be, Padder? He was that. None finder, none finer, was the answer. Except the Sikh, stocky grunted. He'd been to Bombay. He knew French Africa inside out. He could quote poetry and the Quran all day long. He played chess. You don't know what that meant to me. Like a

We used to talk about the regeneration of Turkey and the Sheikh al-Islam between moves. Oh, everything under the sun we talked about. He was awfully open-minded. He believed in slavery, of course, but he quite saw that it would have to die out. That's why he agreed with me about developing the resources of the district by cotton growing, you know? You talked of that, too, asked Strickland. Rather, we discussed it for hours. You don't know what it meant to me.

A wonderful man. Imam Din was not our haji marvelous? Most marvelous. It was all through the haji that we found the money for our cotton play. Imam Died had moved, I fancy, behind Strickland's chair. Yes, it must have been dead against his convictions, too. He brought me news when I was down with fever at dupe that one of Ibn Makara's men was parading through my district with a bunch of slaves. In the fork! What's the matter with the fork? That you can't abide it, said Stalkie.

"'Adam's voice had risen at the last word. "'Local etiquette, sir,' he replied, "'too earnest to notice Stalky's atrocious pun. "'If a slaver runs slaves through British territory, "'he ought to pretend that they're his servants, "'hawking him about in the fork. "'The fork stick that you put round their necks, you know, "'is insolence, same as not backing your top sails in the old days.

"'Besides, it unsettles the district. "'I thought you said slavers didn't come your way,' I put in. They don't, but my chief was smoking them out of the north all that season, and they were bolting into French territory any road they could find. My orders were to take no notice so long as they circulated, but open slave-during the fork was too much. I couldn't go myself, so I told a couple of our Maka Lali police and Imandim to make talk with the gentleman one time. It was rather risky, and it might have been expensive, but turned up trumps. They were back in a few days with slavery. He didn't show a fight.

and a whole crowd of witnesses, and we tried him in my bedroom and find him properly, just to show you how demoralized the brute must have been, Arabs often go doughty after a defeat. He'd snapped up four or five utterly useless Sashihali, and was offering him to all and sundry along the road. Why he offered him to you, didn't he, Ma'amling? I was witnessed that he offered man-eaters for sale, said he, Mamlin. Luckily for my cotton scheme, that landed him both ways.

You see, he had slaved and exposed slaves for sale in British territory. That meant the double fine if I could get it out of him. What was his defense, said Strickland, late of the Punjab police? As far as I remember, but I had a temperature of 104 degrees at the time. He'd mistaken the meridians of Longchum, thought he was in French territory, said he'd never do it again if we let him off with a fine. I got a shaken hands with a brute for that. He paid up cash like a motorist and went off one time.

Did you see him? Yes, didn't I imam, dim. Assuredly, the Sahib both saw and spoke to this labor, and the Sahib also made a speech to the man-eaters when he freed them, and he swore to supply him with labor for all his cotton play. The Sahib leaned on his own servant's shoulder in the while. I remember something of that. I remember Bulaki Rahm giving me the papers to sign,

and I distinctly remember him locking up the money in the safe. Two hundred and ten beautiful English sovereigns. You don't know what that meant to me. I believe it cured my fever, and as soon as I could, I staggered off with the haji to interview the Shaysha Haley about labor. Then I found out why they had been so keen to work. It wasn't gratitude. Their big village had been hit by lightning and burned out a week or two before,

and they lay flat and rose around me asking me for a job. I gave it him. And so you were very happy his mother had stolen up behind us. He liked your cotton, dear. She tidied the lump away. By Joe, I was happy. Adam yawned. Now, if anyone, he looked at the infant,

cares to put a little money into scheme. It will be the making of my district. I can't give you figures, sir, but I assure you'll take your arsenic and Imandin'll take you up to bed and I'll come and tuck you in. Agnes leaned forward, her rounded elbows on his shoulders,

hands joined across his dark hair, and, "'Isn't he a darling?' she said to us, with just the same heart-rending lift to the left eyebrow and the same break of her voice, as sent Strickland mad among the horses in the year 84. We were quiet when they were gone. We waited till Imandin returned to us from above and coughed at the door, as only dark-hearted Asia can.

"'Now,' said Strickland, "'tell us what truly befell, son of my servant?' "'As befell, as our Sahib has said, only only there's an arrangement, a little arrangement on account of his cotton play. Tell, sit, I beg your pardon, infant, says Strickland. But the infant had already made the sign, and we heard Imam didn't hunker down on the floor. One gets little out of the east at attention. When the fever came on our sahib in our roofed house at Dupe, he began,

the haji listened intently to his top. He expected the names of women, though I had already told him that our virtue was beyond belief or compare, and that our sole desire was this cotton play. Being a last convinced, the haji breathed on our Sahib's forehead to sink into his brain news concerning a slave dealer in his district who had made a mock of the law. Sahib, Imam didn't turn to Strickland. Our Sahib answered to those false words as a horse of blood answers to this bird.

He sat up. He issued orders for the apprehension of the slave dealer. Then he fell back. Then we left him. Alone? Servant of my son and son of my servant? said his father. There was an old woman which belonged to the haji.

She had come in with the hajee's money belt. The haji told her that if our sahib died, she would die with him. And truly our sahib had given me orders to depart. Being mad with fever, eh? What can we do, Sahib? This cotton play was his harsh desire. He talked of it in his fever. Therefore, it was his harsh desire that the haji went to fetch.

Doubtless, the haji could have given him money enough out of hand. for ten got in place, but in this respect also our Saif's virtue was beyond belief or compare. Great ones do not exchange monies. Therefore, the haji said, and I helped with my counsel, that we must make arrangements to get the money in all respects conformable with the English law. It was great trouble to us, but the law is the law, and the haji showed the old woman the knife by which she would die if our Sahib died, so I accompanied the haji. Knowing who he was, said Trickland.

No, fearing the man. A virtue went out from him, overbearing the virtue of lesser persons. The haji told Bulaki Ram, the clerk, to occupy the seat of government a dupe till our return. Bulaki Ram feared the haji because the haji had often gloatingly appraised his skill and figures at 5,000 rupees upon any slave block. The haji then said to me, come, and we will make the man-eaters play the cotton game for my delight's delight. The Hajji loved our sahib with the love of a father for his son, I was saved for a savior, of a great one for a great one. But I said, we cannot go to that Shisha Haley place without a hundred rifles.

We have here five. The Hajji said, I have untied as not in my head handkerchief, which will be more to us than a thousand. I saw that he had so loosed it that it lay flagwise on his shoulder. Then I knew that he was a great one with virtue in him. We came to the highlands of the Shaysha Haley on the dawn of the second day, about the time of the stirring of the cold wind. The Haji walked delicately across the open place where their filth is,

and scratched upon the gate which was shut. When it opened, I saw the man-eaters lying on their cots under the eaves of the huts. They rolled off, they rose up, one behind the other the length of the street, and the fear on their faces was as leaves whitening to a breeze. The haji stood in the gate guarding his skirts from defilement. The haji said, I am here once again, giving me six and yoke up. They generously then pushed to us with poles six, and yoke them with a heavy tree. The haji then said, fetch fire from the morning heart and come to windward.

The wind is strong on those headlands at sunrise, so when each had emptied his crock of fire in front of that which was before him, the broadside of the town roared in flame, and all went. The haji then said, at the end of a time there will come here the white man you will, once chased for sport. He'll demand labor to plant such and such stuff. We are that labor and you spawn after you. Nay said, lifting their heads of very little from the edge of the ashes. We are that labor and are spawn after us. The haji said, what is also my name? They said, thy name is also demersible. The haji said, praise then my mercy. And while they did this, the haji walked away, eye following.

The infant made some noise in his throat and reached for some more burgundy. About noon one of our six fell dead. Fright only if fright saw him. None had, none could touch him. Since they were in pairs, and the other of the fork was mad and sang fiercely, we waited for some heathen to do what was needful. There came at last Angari men with goats. The hajee said, what do ye see?

They said, Oh, our lord, we neither see nor hear. The haji said, But I command ye to see and to hear and to say. They said, O our lord, it is to our commanded eyes as those slaves stood in a fork. The haji said, so testify before the officer who waits you in the town of dupe. They said, what shall come to us after? The haji said, the just reward for the informer. But if ye do not testify, then a punishment which shall cause birds to fall from the trees in terror

and monkeys to scream for pity. Hearing this, the Hungarian men hasten to dupe. The haji then said to me, are those things sufficient to establish our case, or must I drive in a village full? I said that three witnesses emptily established any case, but as yet, I said, the haji had not offered his slaves for sale.

It is true, as our sahib said just now, there is one fine for catching slaves, and yet another for making to sell them. and it was the double-fine that we needed sahib for har's sahib's cotton play we had four arranged all this with bulaki rham who knows the english law and i thought the haji remembered but he grew angry and cried out o god refuge of the afflicted must i who am what i am peddled this dog's meat by the roadside to gain his delight for my heart's delight none the less he admitted it was the english law and so he offered me the six five in a small voice with an averted hand head. The Shaysha Haley do not smell of sour milk as heathen should. They smell like leper and Sahib. This is because they eat men. Maybe, said Shikland, but where were thy wits? One witness is not sufficient to establish the fact of a sale. What could we do, Sahed? There was the Hajee's

reputation to consider. We could not have called in a heathen witness for such a thing, and moreover, the Sahib forgets that the defendant himself was making this case. He would not contest his own evidence. Otherwise, I know the law of evidence well enough. So then we went to dupe, and while Bulaki Ram waited among the Angari men, I ran to see our Sahib in bed. His eyes were very bright, and his mouth was full of upside-down orders. But the old woman had not loosened her hair for death. The haji said, be quick with my trial. I am not job. The haji was a learned man. We made the trial swiftly to a sound of soothing voices round the bed. yet yet because no man can be sure whether a sahib of that blood sees or does not see we made it strictly in the manner of the forms of the english law

only the witnesses and the slaves and the prisoner we kept without for his nose's sake then he did not see the prisoner said trickland i stood by to shackle up an angri in case he should demand it but by god's favour he was too far fever to ask for one it is quite true he is true he signed the papers. It is quite true he saw the money put away in the safe. Two hundred and ten English pounds, and it is quite true that the gold wrought on him as a strong cure. But as to his seeing the prisoner and having speech with the man-eaters, the haji breathed all that on his forehead to sink into a sick brain. A little, as he have heard, has remained. Ah, but when the fever broke and our sahib called for the fine book and thin little picture books from Europe with the pictures of plows and hose and cotton mills. Ah, then he laughed as he used to laugh, Sahib. It was his heart's desire, this cotton play. The Hajji loved him, as who does not? It was a little,

little arrangement, Sahib of which, is it necessary to tell all the world? And when didst thou know who the haji was? said Strickland. Not for a certainty till he and our Sahib had returned from their visit to the Shaysha Haley country. It is quite true, as our Sahib says, the man-eaters lay, flat around his feet, and asked for spades to cultivate cotton. That very night, when I was cooking the dinner, the haji said to me, I go to my own place, though God knows whether the man with a stone eyes have left me an ox, a slave, or a woman.

I said, thou art then that one? The haji said, I am ten thousand rupees reward into thy hand. Shall we make another law case and get more cotton machines for the boy? I said, what dog am I to do this? May God prolong thy life for thousand years. The haji said, Who has seen tomorrow? God has given me as it were a son in my old age,

and I praise him. See that the breed is not lost. He walked then from the cooking place to our Sahib's office table under the tree, where our Sahib held in his hand a blue envelope of service, newly come in by runner from the north. At this, during evil news for the haji, I would have restrained him. But he said, we be both great ones.

Neither of us will fail. Our sahib looked up to invite the hajji to approach before he opened the letter, but the haji stood off till our sahib had well opened and well read the letter. Then the haji said, is it permitted to say farewell? Our sahib stabbed the letter on the file with a deep and joyful breath and cried a welcome. The haji said, I go to my own place, and he loosed from his neck a chained heart of ambergris, set in soft gold and held it forth. Our sahib snatched swiftly in the closed fist, downturned, and said, If thy name be written hereon, it is needless, for a name is already engraved on my heart.

The haji said, and on mine also is a name engraved, but there's no name on the amulet. The haji stooped to our sahib's feet, but our sahib raised and embraced him, and the haji covered his mouth with his shoulder cloth because it worked, and so he went away. And what order was in the service letter, Stocky murmured, only an order for our sahib to write a report on some new cattle sickness, but all orders come in the same make. of envelope. We could not tell what order it might have been. When he opened the letter, my son, may he know sign? A cough and oath? Strickland asked. None, sahim. I washed his hands. They did not shake. Afterward he wiped his face, but he was sweating before from the heap. Did he know? Did he know

who the hajee was? said the infant in English. I am a poor man. Who can say what a sahib of that get knows or does not know. But the haji is right. The breed should not be lost. It is not very hot for little children and dupe. And as regards nurses, my sister's cousin and Jew, hmm, that is the boy's own concern. I wonder if his chief ever knew, says Trickland.

Assuredly, said Imamdi, on the night before our sahib went down to the sea, the great sahib, the man with the stone eyes, dined with him in his camp, I being charged at the table. They talked a long while, and the great sahib said, What didst thou think of that one? We did not say Ibn Makarach yonder.

Our sahib said, which one? The great sahib said, That one which taught thy manager should grow cotton for thee. He was in thy district three months to my certain knowledge, and I looked by every runner that thou wouldst send me in his head. Our sahib said, if his head had been needed, another man should have been appointed to govern my district, for he was my friend.

The great sahib laughed and said, If I had needed a lesser man in thy place, be sure I would have sent him, as if I had needed the head of that one, be sure I would have sent men to bring it to me. But tell me now, by what means did thou twist him to thy use and our prophet in this cotton play? Our sahib said, by God, I did not use that man in any fashion whatever. He was my friend. The great sahib said, Tohva, Bosch, tell. our Sahib shook us head as he does, as he did with a child, and they looked at each other like sore-playing men in the ring at a fair. The great sahib dropped his eyes first, and he said,

So be it, I should perhaps have answered thus in my youth. No matter, I have made treaty with that one as an ally of the state. Someday he shall tell me the tale. Then I brought in fresh coffee and they ceased. But I do not think that one will tell the great sahib more than our sahib told him. wherefore i asked because they are both great ones and i have observed in my life that great ones employ words very little between each other in their dealings still less when they speak to a third concerning those dealings also they profit by silence now i think that the mother has come down from the room and i will go rub his feet till he sleeps his ears had caught agnes's step at the stairhead and presently she passed us on her way to the music-room humming the Magnificat.

End of Section 9. Recording by Naveen. Section 10 of Actions and Reactions. This is a Librevox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. Recording by Josh Kibby. Actions and Reactions by Rudyard Kipling.

The New Nighthood. Who gives him the bath? I, said the wet rank jungle sweat, I'll give him the bath. Who'll sing the psalms? We, said the palms, and the hot wind becomes, we'll sing the psalms. Who lays on the sword? I, said the sun, before he is done, I'll lay on the sword. Who fassens his belt?

Aye, said short rations. I know all the fashions of tightening a belt. Who buckles his spur? I, said his chief, exacting. in brief. I'll give him the spur. Who will shake his hand? I, said the fever, and I'm no deceiver. I'll shake his hand. Who brings him the wine? Aye, said Quineine, it's a habit of mine. I'll come with his wine. Who will put him to proof? I, said all earth, whatever he's worth, I'll put to the proof. Who will choose him for night? I, said his mother, before any other, my very own night.

And after this fashion adventure to seek was Sir Galahad made, as it might be last week. End of Section 10. Section 11 of Actions and Reactions. This is a Libravox recording. All LibraVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. Actions and Reactions by Rudyard Kittling. The Puzzler.

i had not seen penfentenioux since the middle nineties when he was minister of ways and wood-sides in de florar's first administration last summer though he nominally held the same portfolio he was his colony's premier in all but name and the idol of his own province which is two and a half times the size of england politically his creed was his growing country and he came over to england to develop a great idea in her behalf believing that he had put it in train i made haste to welcome him to my house for a week that he was chased to my door by his own agent-general in a motor that they turned my study into a cabinet meeting which i was not invited to attend that the local telegraph all but broke down beneath the strain of hundred word-coated cables and that i practically broke into the house of a stranger to get him telephonic facilities on a sunday are things i overlooked what i objected to was his ingratitude while i thus tore up england to help him so i said why on earth didn't you see your opposite number in town instead of bringing your war office work here eh who said he looking up from his fourth cable since lunch see the english minister for ways and wood-sides i saw him said penfintenue without enthusiasm it seemed that he had called twice on the gentleman but without an appointment i thought if i wasn't big enough my business was and each time had found him engaged a third-party intervening suggested that a meeting might be arranged if due notice were given then said pen fententenew i called at the office at ten o'clock but they'd be in bed i cried one of the babies was awake he told me that that my sort of questions he slapped the pile of cables were only taken between eleven and two so i waited

and when you got to business i asked he made a gesture of despair it was like talking to children they'd never heard of it and your opposite number penfenenew described him hush you mustn't talk like that i shuddered he's one of the best of good fellows you should meet him socially i've done that too he said have you heaven forbid i cried but that's the proper thing to say oh he said all the proper things only i thought as this was england that they'd more or less have the hang of all the general hang together of my idea but i had to explain it from the beginning ah they probably mislaid the papers i said and i told him the story of a three million pound insurrection caused by a deputy under-secretary sitting upon a mass of green-labeled correspondence instead of reading it i wonder it doesn't happen every week he answered do you mind my having the agent-general to dinner again to-night i'll wire and he can motor down the agent-general arrived two hours later a patient and expostulating person visibly torn between the pulling devil of a rampant colony and the placid baker of a largely uninterested england but with penfenew behind him he had worked for he told us that lord lundee the law lord was the final authority on the legal and constant constitutional aspects of the great idea and to him it must be referred good heavens alive thundered pen-fenenew i told you to get that settled last christmas it was the middle of the house-party season said the agent general mildly lord lundee's at creedon's green now he spends his holidays there it's only forty miles off shan't i disturb his holiness said pen-fenteni heavily perhaps my sort of questions he snorted mayn't be discussed except at midnight

oh don't be a child i said what this country needs said penfentenew is and for ten minutes he trumpeted rebellion what you need is to pay for your own protection i cut in when he drew breath and i showed him a yellowish paper supplied grottis by government which is called schedule d to my merciless delight he had never seen the thing before and i completed my victory over him and all the colonies with a brassese naval annual and a statesman year book the agent-general interposed with agent generalities but they were merely provocateurs about ties of sentiment they be blowed said penfintenue what's the good of sentiment towards a kindergarten quite so ties of common funk are the things that bind us together and the sooner you new nations realize it the better what you need is an annual invasion then you'd grow up thank you thank you said the agent-general that's what i am always trying to tell my people but my dear fool penfintenu almost wept do you pretend that these banana fingered amateurs at home are grown up you poor serious pagan man i retorted if you take em that way you'll wreck your great idea will you take him to lord lundee's to-morrow said the agent-general promptly i suppose i must i see you-i see you-he'll wreck your great idea will you take him to lord lundee's to-morrow said the agent-general promptly i suppose i must i suppose i must i see said if you won't not me i'm going home said the agent-general and departed i'm glad that i'm no colonies agent-general penfenenew continued to argue about naval contributions till one fifteen a m though i was victor from the first at ten o'clock i got him and his correspondence into the motor and he had the decency to ask whether he had been unpolished over night i replied that i waited an apology

this he made excuse for renewed arguments and used wayside shows as illustrations of the decadence of england for example we burst attire within a mile of creedon's green and to save time walked into the beautifully kept little village his eye was caught by a building of pale blue tin stencelled calvinist chapel before whose shuttered windows an italian organ-grinder with a petticoated monkey was playing dolly gray yes that's it snapped the egoist that's a parable of the general situation in england and look at those brutes a huge household removal's van was halted at a public-house the men in charge were drinking beer from blue and white mugs it seemed to me a pretty sight but penfenenew said it represented our national attitude lord lundee's summer resting-place we learned was a farm a little out of the village up a hill round which curled a high-haged road only an initiated few spend their holidays at creedens green and they have trained the householders to keep the place select pen fanteneue made a grievance of this as we walked up the lane followed at a distance by the organ-grinder suppose he is having a house-party he said anything's possible in this insane land just at that minute we found ourselves opposite an empty villa its roof was of black slate with bright eyes unweathered ridge tiling its walls were of blood-colored brick cornered and banded with vermiculated stucco work and there was cobalt magenta and purest apple-green window-glass on either side of the front door the hull was fenced from the road by a low brick-pillared flint wall topped with a cast-iron gothic rail picked out in blue and gold tight beds of geranium calceolaria and lobelia speckled the glass

from whose centre rose one of the finest ara carrias its other name by the way is monkey puzzler that it has ever been my lot to see it must have been full thirty feet high and its foliage exquisitely answered the iron railings such bijou ne plus replead with all the amenities do not as i pointed out to pen fententenew transpire outside of england a hedge swinging sharp right flanked the garden and above it on a slope of daisy dotted meadows we could see lord lundee's tiled and half-timbered summer farmhouse of a sudden we heard voices behind the tree the fine full tones of the unembarrassed english speaking to their equals that tore through the hedge like sleet through rafters that it is not called monkey puzzler for nothing i willingly concede this was a rich and rolling note but on the other hand i submit that the name implies that it might could would or should be ascended by a monkey and not that the ascent is a physical impossibility i believe one of our south american spider monkeys wouldn't hesitate by jove it might be worth trying if this was a crisper voice than the first a third higher pitched and full of pleasant affectations broke in oh practical men there is no ape here why do you waste one of god's own days on unprofitable discussion give me a match i've a good mind to make you demonstrate in your own person come on bubbles we'll make jimmy climb there was a sound of scuffling broken by squeaks from jimmy of the high voice i turned back and drew penfintenue into the side of the flanking hedge i remembered to have read in a society paper that lord lundee's lesser name was bubbles what are they doing pen fententenew said sharply drunk just playing superabundant vitality of the race you know we'll watch em i answered the noise ceased

my deliver jimmy gasped the ram caught in the thicket and i'm the only one who can talk neapolitan leggo my collar he cried aloud in a foreign tongue and was answered from the gate it's the calvinistic organ-grinder i whispered i'd already found a practicable break at the bottom of the hedge they're going to try to make the monkey climb i believe here let me look pen fententenew flung himself down and rooted till he too broke a peep-hole we lay side by side commanding the entire garden at ten yards range you know em said penfintenue as i made some noise or other by sight only the big fellow in flannel says lord lundee the light built one with the yellow beard painted his picture at the last academy he is a swell r a james loaman and the brown chap with the hands tomling sir christopher tomling the south american engineer who built the san juan viaduct i know said pen fantene we ought to have had him with us do you think a monkey would climb the tree the organ-grinder at the gate fenced his beast with one arm as jimmy talked don't show off your futile accomplishments said lord lundee tell him it's an experiment interest him shut up bubbles you aren't in court jimmy replied this needs delicacy giuseppe says interest the monkey the brown engineer interrupted he won't climb for love cut up to the house and get some biscuits bubbles sugar ones and an orange or two no need to tell our women folk the huge white figure lobbed off at a trot which would not have disgraced a boy of seventeen i gathered from something jimmy let fall that the three had been at harrow together that tomling has a head on his shoulders muttered pen fententenew pity we didn't get him for the colony but the question is will the monkey climb be quick jimmy tell the man we'll give him five bob for the loan of the beast

now run the organ under the tree and we'll dress it when bubbles comes back sir christopher cried i've often wondered said pen fententenew whether it would puzzle a monkey he had forgotten the needs of his nation and was earnestly parting the white-thorn stems with his fingers jeseppe and jimmy did as they were told the monkey following them with a wary and malignant eye here's a discovery said jimmy the singing part of this organ comes off the wheels he spoke volubly to the proprietor oh it's so as josepe can take it to his room a night's and play it do you hear that the organ-grinder after his day's crime plays his a cursed machine for love for love chris and michael angelo was one of em don't jaw tell him to take the beast's petticoat off said sir christopher tomling lord lundee returned very little winded through a gap higher up the hedge they're all out thank goodness he cried but i've rated what i could marines glaces candied fruit and a bag of oranges excellent said the world-renowned contractor jimmy you're the light weight jump up on the organ and impaled these things on the leaves as i hand em i see said jimmy capering like a spring buck upward and onward eh first he'll reach out for how infernal prickly these leaves are this biscuit next we'll lure him on that's about the reach of his arm with the maron glace and then he'll open out this orange how human how like your ignoble career bubbles with care and elaboration they ornamented that trees lower branches with sugar-topped biscuits oranges bits of banana and maron's glaces till it looked very apse path to paradise unchained the guy asked gudis said sir christopher commandingly jessppe placed the monkey atop of the organ where the beast misunderstanding stood on his head

he's throwing himself on the mercy of the court milud said jimmy no now he's interested now he's reaching after higher things what wouldn't i give to have here he mentioned a name not unhonored in british art ambition plucking apples of sodom the monkey had pricked himself and was swearing genius hampered by convention oh there's a whole bushelful of allegories in it give him time he's balancing the probabilities said lord lundee the three closed round the monkey hanging on his every motion with an earnestness almost equal to ours the great judge's head seamed and vertical forehead iron mouth and pike-like under jaw all set on that thick neck rising out of the white flannel collar was thrown against the puckered green silk of the organ front as it might have been a cameo of titus jimmy with raised eyes and parted lips fingered his grizzled chestnut beard and i was near enough to note the capable beauty of his hands sir christopher stood a little apart his arms folded behind his back one heavy brown boot thrust forward chin in as curved and black eyebrows lowered to shade the keen eyes joseppe's dark face between flashing earrings a twisted rag of red and yellow silk round his throat turned from the reaching yearning monkey to the pink and white biscuits spiked on the bronze leafage and upon them all fell the serious and workman-like son of an english summer forenoon field de st louis montailles au ceil said lord lundee suddenly in a voice that made me think of black caps i do not know what the monkey thought because at that instant he leaped off the organ and disappeared there was a clash of broken glass behind the tree the monkey's face distorted with passion appeared at an upper window of the house and a starred hole in the stained-glass window to the left of the front door showed the first steps of his upward path we've got to catch him cried sir christopher come along they pushed at the door which was unlocked yes but consider the ethics of the case said jimmy isn't this burglary or something bubbles

settled that when he's caught said sir christopher were responsible for the beast a furious clanging of bells broke out of the empty house followed by muffed gurglings and trumpetings what the deuce is that i asked half aloud the plumbing of course said penfentenew what a pity i believe he'd have climbed if lord lundee hadn't put him off wait a moment chris said jimmy the interpreter joseppe says he may answer to the music of his infancy joseppe therefore will go in with the organ orpheus with his lute you know avante orpheus there's no neapolitan for a bathroom but i fancy your friend is there i'm not going into another man's house with a hurdy-gurdy said lord lundee recoiling as josephi unshipped the working mechanism of the organ it developed a hang-down leg from its wheels slipped a strap round his shoulders and gave the handle a twist don't be a cad bubbles was jimmy's answer you couldn't leave us now if you were on the wools sack play orpheus the caddy accompanies with a whoop a buzz and a crash the organ sprang to life under the hand of joseppe and the procession passed through the grain to imitate walnut front door a moment later we saw the monkey ramping on the roof he'll be all over the township in a minute if we don't head him said penfintenew leaping to his feet and crashing into the garden we headed him with pebbles till he retired through a window to the tuneful reminder that he had left a lot of little things behind him as we passed the front door it swung open and showed jimmy the artist sitting at the bottom of a newly clean staircase he waggled his hands at us and when we entered we saw that the man was stricken speechless his eyes grew red red like a ferrets and what little breath he had whistled shrilly at first we thought it was a fit and then we saw that it was mirth the inopportune mirth of the artistic temperament

the house palpitated to an infamous melody punctuated by the stump of the barrel organs one leg as joseppe above moved from room to room after his rebel slave now and again a floor shook a little under the combined rushes of lord lundee and sir christopher tomling who gave many in contradictory orders but when they could they curse jimmy with splendid thoroughness have you anything to do with the house panted jimmy at last because we're using it just now he gulped and i'm a keeping cave all right said penfintenew and shut the hall door jimmy you unspeakable blackguard jimmy you cur you coward lord lundee's voice overbore the flood of melody come up here joseppe's saying something we don't understand jimmy listened and interpreted between hiccups he says you'd better play the organ bubbles and let him do the stalking the monkey knows him by jove he's quite right said sir christopher from the landing take it bubbles at once my god said lord lundee in horror the chase reverberated over our heads from the attics to the first floor and back again bodies and voices met in collision and argument and once or twice the organ hit walls and doors then it broke forth in a new manner he's playing it said jimmy i know his acute justinian ear are you fond of music i think lord lundee plays very well for a beginner i ventured ah that's the trained legal intellect like mastering a brief i haven't got it he wiped his eyes and shook hi said penfintenu looking through the stained-glass window down the garden what's that a household removal's van in charge of four men had halted at the gate a husband and his wife householders beyond question quavered irresolutely up the path he looked tired she was certainly cross in all this haphazard world the last couple to understand a scientific experiment

i laid hands on jimmy the clamber above drowning speech and with penfenenew's aid propped him against the window that he should see he saw nodded fell as an umbrella can fall and kneeling beat his forehead on the shut door penfintenew slid the bolt the furniture men reinforced the two figures on the path and advanced spreading generously hadn't we better warn them upstairs i suggested no i'll die first said jimmy i'm pretty near it now besides they call me name i turned from the artist to the administrator satyrus paribus i think we'd better be going said penfintenew dealer in crises ta take me with you said jimmy i've no reputation to lose but i'd like to watch em from er outside the picture there's always a modus wendy penfentenew murmured and tiptoed along the hall to a back door which he opened quite silently we passed into a tangle of gooseberry bushes where at his statesman-like example we crawled on all fours and regained the hedge here we lay up secure in our alibi but your firm the woman was wailing to the furniture removals men your firm promised me everything should be in yesterday and it's to-day you should have been here yesterday the last tenants ain't out yet lighty said one of them lord lundee was rapidly improving in technique though organ grinding unlike the law is more of a calling than a trade and he hung occasionally on a dead centre jeseppe i think was singing but i could not understand the drift of sir christopher's remarks they were spanish the woman said something we did not catch you might ave sublet it the man insisted or your gentleman ere might but i didn't send for the police at once i wouldn't do that lydy they're only fruit pickers on a bino they aren't particular where they sleep do you mean they've been sleeping there i only had it cleaned last week get them out oh if you say so we'll ave m out of it

in two twos alf fetch me the spare swingle bar don't you'll knock the pane off the door get them out what the ell else am i trying to do for you lydie the man answered with pathos but the woman wheeled on her mate edward they're all drunk here and they're all mad there do something she said edward took one short step forward and sighed hullo in the direction of the turbulent house the woman walked up and down the very figure of domestic tragedy the furniture men swayed a little on their heels and got him the shout rang through all the windows at once it was followed by a blood-hound-like bay from sir christopher a maniacal prestissimo on the organ and loud cries for jimmy but jimmy at my side rolled his congested eyeballs owl-wise i never knew them he said i'm an orphan the front door opened and the three came forth to short-lived triumph i had never before seen a law-lord dressed as for tennis with a stump-leg barrel organ strapped to his shoulder but it is a shy bird in this plumage lord lundee strove to disembarrass himself of his accoutrements much as an ill-trained punch in judy dog tries to escape backwards through his frill collar sir christopher covered with lime wash cherished a bleeding thumb and the almost crazy monkey tore at joseppe's hair the men on both sides reeled but the woman stood her ground idiots she said and once more idiots i could have gladdened a few convicts of my acquaintance with a photograph of lord lundee at that instant madame he began wonderfully preserving the role in his voice it was a monkey sir christopher sucked his thumb and nodded take it away and go she replied go away i would have gone and gladly on this permission but these still strong men must ever be justifying themselves lord lundee turned to the husband who for the first time spoke i have rented this house i am moving in he said we ought to have been in yesterday the woman interrupted yes we ought to have been in yesterday have you slept there over night said the man peevishly no i assure you we haven't said lord lendy

then go away go quite away cried the woman they went in single file down the path they went silently restrapping the organ on its wheels and re-chaining the monkey to the organ damn it all said pen fententenew they do face the music and they do stick by each other in private life ties of common funk i answered jeseppe ran to the gate and fled back to the possible world lord lundee and sir christopher constrained by tradition pace slowly then it came to pass that the woman who walked behind them lifted up her eyes and beheld the tree which they had dressed stop she called and they stopped who did that there was no answer the eternal bad boy in every man hung its head before the eternal colonel mother in every woman who put these disgusting things there she repeated suddenly penfintenew premier of his colony in all but name left jimmy and me and appeared at the gate if he is not turned out of office that is how he will appear on the day of armageddon well done you he cried zealously and doffed his hat to the woman have you any children madam he demanded yes too they should have been here to-day the firm promised then were not a minute too soon that monkey escaped it was a very dangerous beast might have frightened your children into fits all the organ-grinder's fault a most lucky thing these gentlemen caught it when they did i hope you aren't badly mauled sir christopher shaken as i was i wanted to get away and laugh i could not but admire the scoundrel's consummate tact in leading his second highest trump an ass would have introduced lord lunday and they would not have believed him it took the trick the couple smiled and gave respectful thanks for their deliverance by such hands from such perils not in the least said lord lundee anybody any father would have done as much and pray don't apologize your mistake was quite natural a furniture man snigger here and lord lundee rolled an eye of doom on their ranks by the way if you have trouble with these persons they seem to have taken as much as is good for them

please let me know er good morning they turned into the lane heaven said jimmy brushing himself down who's that real man with the real head and we hurried after them for they were running unsteadily squeaking like rabbits as they ran we overtook them in a little nutwood half a mile up the road where they had turned aside and were rolling so we rolled with them and ceased not till we had arrived at the extremity of exhaustion you you saw it all then said lord lundee rebuttoning his nineteen-inch collar i saw it was a vital question from the first responded pen-fentenioux and blew his nose it was by the way do you mind telling me your name suma pen-fenenegu's great idea has gone through a little chipped at the edges but in fine and far-reaching shape his opposite number worked at it like a mule a bewildered mule beaten from behind coaxed from in front and propped on either soft side by lord lundi of the compressed mouth and the searing tongue sir christopher tomling has been ravished by the argentine where after all he was but preparing trade routes for hostile peoples and now adorns the forefront of pen-fenew's advisory board this was an unforeseen extra as was jimmy's grottis full length it will be in the year's academy of pen-fenenew who has returned to his own place now and again from afar off between the slam and bump of his shifting scenery the glare of his manipulated limelight and the control rolling of his thunder-drums i catch his voice lifted in encouraging and advice to his fellow countrymen. He is quite sound on ties of sentiment and, alone of colonial statesmen, ventures to talk of the ties of common funk. Herein I have my reward.

End of Section 11. Section 12 of Actions and Reactions. This is a Librox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit Libervox.org. Recording by phone. Actions and reactions by Richard Kipling. The Puzzler, Poland. The Celt in all his variants from Bilt to Ballyhoo,

his mental processes are plain, one knows what he will do, and can logically predicate his finish by his start. But the English, ah, the English, they are quite a race apart. Their psychology is bovine, their outlook crude and rare. They abandon vital matters to be tickled with a straw, but the straw that they were tickled with, the chafe that they were fed with, they convert into a weaver's beam to break their foeman's head with. For undemocratic reasons and for motives not of state, they arrive at their conclusions,

largely inarchulate. Being void of self-expression, they confide their views to none, but sometimes in a smoking room one learns why things are done. In telegraphic sentences, half-swallowed at the ends, they hint a matter's inwardness, and there the matter ends, and while the Celt is talking from Valencia to Kerr-Wall, the English, ah, the English, Don't say anything at all. End of Section 12. Recording by phone. Section 13 of actions and reactions.

This is a Librevox recording. All Libervox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. Actions and reactions by Rudyard Kipling. Little Foxes. A Tale of the Gehon Hunt. A fox came out of his earth on the banks of the great river guihon, which waters Ethiopia.

He saw a white man riding through the dry Dura stocks, and that his destiny might be fulfilled, barked at him. The rider drew rain among the villagers round his stirrup. What said he is that? Dat said the shake of the village is a fox, O excellency, our governor? It is not then a jackal? No jackal, but Abu Hussein, the father of,

of cunning. Also, the white man's book half aloud, I am Moudir of this province. It is true, they cried, Yassart al-Mudir, O excellency, our governor. The great river Gihon, well used to the moods of kings, slid between his mile-wide banks towards the sea, while the governor praised God in a loud and searching cry never before heard by the river. When he lowered his right forefinger from behind his right ear, the villagers talked to him of their crops, barley, dura, millet, onions, and the like. The governor stood in his stirrups. North he looked up a strip of green cultivation,

a few hundred yards wide, that lay like a carpet between the river and the tawny line of the desert. 60 miles that strip stretched before him and as many behind. At every half mile a groaning water wheel lifted the soft water from the river to the crops by way of a mud-built aqueduct. A foot or so wide was the water channel. Five foot or more high was the bank on which it ran and its base was broad in proportion. Abu Hussein misnamed the father of cunning, drank from the river below his earth, and a shadow was long in the low sun. He could not understand the loud cry which the governor had cried.

The sheikh of the village spoke of the crops from which the rulers of all lands draw revenue. But the governor's eyes were fixed between his horse's ear on the nearest water channel. Very like a ditch in Ireland, he murmured and smiled, dreaming of a razor-topped bank in distant Kildare. Encouraged by that smile, the sheikh continued. When crops feel, it is necessary to remit taxation. Then it is a good thing, O Excellency, our governor, that you come and see the crops which have failed

and discover that we have not lied. Assuredly, the governor shortened his reins. The horse cantered on, rose at the embankment of the water channel, changed leg cleverly on top, and hopped down in a cloud of golden dust. Abu Hussein from his earth washed with interest. He had never before seen such things.

assuredly the governor repeated and came back by the way he had gone. It is always best to see for oneself. An ancient and still bullet-speckled stern-wheel steamer, with a barge lashed to her side, came round the river-ben. She whistled to tell the governor his dinner was ready, and the horse, seeing his fodder piled on the barge, whinnied back. Moreover, the Sheikh added, in the days of the oppression, the emirs and their creatures, dispossessed many people of their lands. All up and down the river, our people are waiting

to return to their lawful fields. Judges have been appointed to settle that matter, said the governor. They will presently come in steamers and hear the witnesses. Wherefore did the judges kill the emirs? We would rather be judged by the men who executed God's judgment on the emirs. We would rather abide by your decision, O excellency, our governor. The governor nodded. It was a year since he had seen the emir's stretch clothes and still round the reddened sheepskin where Le Al-Amadi, the prophet of God. Now there remained no trace of their dominion except the old steamer, once part of a dervish flotilla, which was his house and office.

She sidled into the shore, lowered a plank, and the governor followed his horse aboard. Lights burned on her till late, duly reflected in the river that tugged at her mooring, The governor read, not for the first time, the administration reports of one John Jorick's M. F.H. We shall need, he said settling to his inspector, about ten couple. I'll get him when I go home. You'll be whip, Baker? The inspector who was not yet 25 signified his assent in the usual manner, while Abu Hussein barked at the vast desert moon. Ha, said the governor, coming out in his pajamas,

we'll be giving you Kipi in another month, my friend. It was four, as a matter of fact, a steamer with melodious barge full of hounds anchored at that landing. The inspector leaped down among them, and the homesick wanderers received him as a brother. Everybody fed him everything on board ship, but there are real dainty hounds at bottom, the governor explained. That's royal you've got hold of, the pick of the bunch,

and the bitch that's got hold of you, she's a little excited, is May Queen Merriman, out of Coatsmond modeling, you know. I know. Grand old bett with a tan eyebrows, the inspector cooed. Oh, Ben, I shall take an interest in life now. Hark to him. Oh, hark!

Abu Hussain, under the high bank, went about his night's work, and Eddie carried his scent to the barge, and three villagers heard the crash of music that followed. Even then, Abu Hussain did not know better than to bark in reply. Well, what about my province? The governor asked. Not so bad, the inspector answered. with Royals' head between his knees. Of course, all the villages want remission of taxes,

but as far as I can see, the whole country is stinking with foxes. Our trouble will be chomping him in cover. I've got a list of the only villages entitled to any remission. What do you call this flat-sided blue-mottled beast with the jowl? Beagle Boy, I have my doubts about him. Do you think we can get two days a week? Easy, and as many buys as you please. The shake of this village, tells me that his barley has failed and he wants a 50% of remission. We'll begin with him tomorrow and look at his crops as we go. Nothing like personal supervision, said the governor. They began at sunrise. The pack flew of the barge in every direction

and after gambled, stud-like terriers at Abu Hussein's many earths. Then they drank themselves pot-bellied on Gihon River, while the governor and the inspector chastised them with whips. Scorpions were added, for a May Queen-nosed one, and was removed to the barge lamenting. Mystery, a puppy alas, met a snake, and the blue-modeled beagle-boy, never a dainty-hound, ate that which he should have passed by. Only royal of the bell-war, tan-head, and the sad, discerning eyes made any attempt

to uphold the honor of England before the watching village. You can't expect everything, said the governor after breakfast. We got it, though. Everything except Fox. Have you seen May Queen's nose? said the inspector. And mystery's dead. We'll keep him coupled next time till we get well in among the crops. I say, what a babbling body snatcher that beagle boy is.

Ought to be drowned. They worry people so damn casual hereabouts. Give him another chance, the inspector pleaded, not knowing that he should live to repent most bitterly. Talking of chances, said the governor, this shake lies about his barley being a failure. If it's high enough to hide a hound at this time, with the ear, it's all right. And he wants a 50% remission, you said? You didn't go on past the

melon patch, where I tried to turn wanderer. It's all burnt up from there onto the desert. His other water wheel has broken down, too, the inspector replied. Very good. We'll split the difference and allow him 25% off. Where will we meet him tomorrow? There's some trouble among the villages down the river about their land titles. It's going good ground there, too, the inspector The next meet, then, was some 20 miles down the river, and the pack were not enlarged till they were fairly among the fields. Abu Hussein was there in force, four of them, four delirious hunts of four minutes each, four hounds per fox ended in four earths just above the river.

All the village looked on. We forgot about the earths, the banks are riddled with them. This will defeat us, said the inspector. Wait a moment. The governor drew forth the sneezing hound. I've just remembered, I'm governor of these parts. Then turn out a black battalion to stop for us. We'll need him, old man.

The governor straightened his bag. Give ear, oh, people, he cried, I make a new law. The villagers closed in. He called. Henceforth, I will give one dollar to the man on whose land Abu Hussein is found. And another dollar, he held up the coin, to the man on whose land these dogs shall kill him. But to the man on whose land Abu Hussein shall run into a hole,

such as is this hole, I will give not dollars, but a most unmeasurable beating. Is it understood? Oh, Excellency, a man stepped forward. On my land, Abu Hussein was found this morning. Is it not so, brothers? None denied. The governor tossed him over four dollars without a word. On my land, they all went into their holes, cried another, therefore I must be beaten. Not so. The land is mine, and mine are the beatings. This second speaker thrust forward his shoulder, holders already bared and the villagers shouted. Hello, two men anxious to be licked. There must be some swindle about the land, said the governor. Then, in local vernacular, what are your rights to the beating? As a river reached changes beneath a slant of the sun, that which has been a scattered mob,

changed to a court of most ancient injustice. The hounds tore and sobbed at Abu-San's heartstone, all unnoticed among the legs of the witnesses, and Guyhon also accustomed to laws purred approval. You will not wait till the judges come up the river to settle the dispute, said Governor at last? No, shouted all the village, save the man who had first asked to be beaten. We will abide by our Excellency's decision. Let our Excellency turn out the creatures of the emirs who stole our lands in the days of the oppression. and thou say'st the governor turned to the man who at first asked to be beaten i say i will wait till the wise judges come down in the steamer then i will bring my many witnesses he replied he is rich he will bring many witnesses the village sheik muttered no need thy own mouth condemns thee the governor cried no man lawfully entitled to his land would wait one hour before entering upon it stand aside the man fell back and the village jeered him

The second claimant stooped quickly beneath the lifted hunting crop. The village rejoiced. Oh, such a one, son of such an one, said the governor, prompted by the sheikh, learn from the day when I send the odor to block up all the holes where Abu Hussein may hide on thy land. The light flicks end. The man stood up triumphant. By that accolade had the supreme government acknowledged his title before all men.

While the village praised the perspicacity of the governor, A naked, pock-marked child stood forth to the earth and stood on one leg, unconcerned as a young stork. Hal, he said, hands behind his back, this should be blocked up with bundles of durostocks or better bundles of thorns. Better thorns, said the governor. Thick ends innermost.

The child nodded gravely and squatted on the sand. An evil day for thee, Abu Hussein, he shrilled into the mouth of the earth. A day of obstacles to tie flagitious returns in the morning. Who is it? The governor asked the Sheikh, it thinks. Farag the fatherless. His people were slain in the days of depression, the man to whom Our Excellency has awarded the land is, as it were his maternal uncle. Will it come with me and feed the big dogs? said the governor. The other peering children drew back. Run, they cried. Our Excellency will feed Farag to the big dogs. I will come, said Farag,

and I will never go. He threw his arm round Royal. 's neck and the wise beast licked his face. Benjamin by Jove, the inspector cried, No, said the governor, I believe he has the makings of a James pig. Farag waved his hand to his uncle and led Royal onto the barge. The rest of the pack followed. Kihan, that had seen many sports, learned to know the hunt barge well. He met her rounding his bends on a great December dawns to music wild and lamentable as the almost forgotten thrope of Dervoir drum, when high above the royal's tenor bell, sharper even than lying beagle's voice, falsetto break, Farag chanted deathless war against Abu Hussein and all his seed.

At sunrise, the river would shoulder her carefully into her place and listen to the rush and scudder of the pack, fleeing up the gangplank and the tramp of the governor's Arab behind hit them. They would pass over the brow into the dewless crops where Guillaume, low and shrunken, could only guess what they were about when Abu Hussein flew down the bank to scratch at a stopped earth and flew back into the barley again. As Farag had foretold, it was evil days for Abu Hussein, ere he learned to take necessary steps and to get away crisply. Sometimes, Gihon saw the whole procession of the hunt silhouetted against the morning blue, bearing him company for many merry miles. At every half-mile, the horses and the donkeys

jumped the water channels up on, change your leg, and off again like figures in Zotrope, till they grew small among the line of water wheels. Then Yvonne waited their rustling return through the crops and took them to rest on his bosom at ten o'clock. While the horses ate, and Faroaks slept with his head on royal flank, the governor and his inspector, worked for the good of the hunt and his province. After a little time, there was no need to beat any man for neglecting his earths. The steamer's destination was telegraphed from water wheel to waterwheel, and the villagers stopped out and put to according. If an earth were overlooked, it meant some dispute as to the ownership of the land, and then and there the hunt checked and settled it

in this wise. The governor and the inspector side by side, but the latter half a horse's length to the rear. Both bare-shouldered claimants well in front, the villagers half-moon behind them, and Farrague with the pack, who quite understood the performance, sitting down on the left. Twenty minutes were enough to settle the most complicated case, for as the governor said to the judge and the steamer, one gets at the truth in a hunting field a heap quicker than in your law courts. But when the evidence is conflicting, the judge suggested, wash the field. They'll throw tongue fast enough if you're running a wrong scent. You've never had an appeal from one of my decisions yet. The shakes on horseback, the lesser folk on clever

donkeys, the children so despised by Farag soon understood that villages which repaired their water wheels and channels stood highest in the governor's favor. He bought their barley for his horses. Channels, he said, are necessary that we may all jump them. They are necessary, moreover, for the crops. Let there be many wheels and sound channels and much good barley. Without money, replied an aged shake, there are no water wheels. I will lend the money, said Governor. At what interest, O our excellency? Take you two of May Queen's puppies to bring up in your village in such a manner that they do not eat filth, nor lose their hair, no catch fever from lying in the sun, but become wise hounds. Like Royale? Not like Biggleby.

Already it was an insult along the river to compare a man to the shifty anthropophagus blue-modelled hairier. Certainly like Royall, not in the least like Bigelby. That shall be on the interest on the loan. Let the puppies thrive and the water-wheel be built, and I shall be content, said the governor. The wheel shall be built, but, oh, our excellency, if our gods favor the pups, grow to be well-smelters, not filth-eaters, not unaccustomed to their names, not lawless, who will do them and meet justice at the time of judging the young dogs. Hounds, man, hounds! Hawans, oh, shake, we call them in their manhood.

The Huanes, when they judged, are at the Shahoe. I have unfriends down the river to whom our excellency has also entrusted Hawans to bring up. Puppies, man, Papis! We shall call them, Oshake, in their childhood. Papit! My enemies may judge my puppies unjustly at the Shahoe. this must be thought of. I see the obstacle. Here now, if the new water wheel is built in a month without oppression, thou, Oshake, shall be named one of the judges to judge the puppies at the shahoe. Is it understood? Understood. We will build the wheel. I and my seed are responsible for the payment of the loan. Where are my puppies? If they eat foul, must they on any account eat the feathers?

On no account must they eat the feathers? Farag and the barge will tell thee how they are to live. There is no instance of any default in the governor's personal and unauthorized loans for which they call him the father of water wheels. But the first puppy show at the capital needed enormous tact and the presence of a black battalion stentatiously drilling in the barrack square to prevent trouble after the price-giving. But who can chronicle the glories of the Gihon hunt or their shames?

who remembers the kill in the marketplace when the governor bade the assembled sheikhs and warriors observe how the hounds would instantly devour the body of Abu Hussein. But how, when he had scientifically broken it up, the weary path turned from it in loathing, and Farag wept because he said the world's face had been blackened. What men who have not yet written beyond the sound of any horn recalled the midnight run, which ended, Beagle Boy leading, among tombs, the hasty whip-off and the oaths taken a bow a bone to forget the worries. The desert run when Abu Hussein forsook the cultivation

and made a six-mile point to earth in a desolate core, when strange armed riders on camels swooped out of a ravine and instead of giving battle offered to take the tired hounds home on their beasts, which they did and vanished. Above all, who remembers the death of royal, when a certain sheikh wept above the body of stainless hound, as it might have been his sons, and that day the hunt rode no more. The badly kept logbook says little of this, but at the end of their second season, 49 brace, appears the dark entry. New blood badly wanted. They are beginning to listen to Beagle Boy.

The inspector attended to the matter when his leave fell due, remember, said the governor, you must get us the best blood in England. Real dainty hounds, expense no object, but don't trust your own judgment. Present my letters of introduction and take what they give you. The inspector presented his letters in a society where they make much of horses, more of hounds, and are tolerably civil to men who can ride. They passed him from house to house, mounted him according to his merits, and fed him after years of goat-chop and Worcesters sauce, perhaps a thought too richly. The seat or castles where he made his great coup does not much matter. Four masters of foxhounds were at table, and in a mellow hour, the inspector told him stories of the Gihon hunt. He ended. Van said I wasn't to trust my own judgment about hounds, but I think there ought to be a special tariff for empire makers.

As soon as his host could speak, they reassured him on this point. And now tell us about your first puppy show all over a little. again, said one, and about the earth-stopping? Was that all Ben's own invention? said another. Wait a moment, said a large, clean-shaven man, not an M-F-H, at the end of the table. Are your villagers habitually beaten by your governor when they fail to stop fox's holes? The tone and the phrase were enough, even if, as the inspector confessed afterwards, the big blue double-chint man had not looked so like Beagleboy. He took him on for the honor of Ethiopia. We only had twice a week, sometimes three times. I have never known a man

chastised more than four times a week unless there's a buy. The large, loose-lipped man flung his napkin down, came around the table and cast himself into a chair next to the inspector, and leaned forward earnestly so that he breathed in the conspector's face, chastised with what he said, with the corbash on the feet. A corbash is a strip of old hippo-hide with a sort of keel on like the cutting edge of a boar's tusk, but we use the rounded side for a first offender. And do any consequences follow this sort of thing? For the victim, I mean, not for you.

Very rarely. Let me be fair. I've never seen a man die under the lash, but gangrene may set up if the corbash has been pickled. Pickled on what? All the table was still and interested. In coperous, of course. Didn't you know that, said the inspector? Thank God I didn't.

The large man sputtered visibly. The inspector wiped his face and grew bolder. You mustn't think we're careless about our earth-stoppers. We have a hunt fund for hot tar. Tars a splendid dressing if the toenails aren't beaten off. But hunting as large a country as we do, we may be back at the village for a month. And if the dressings ain't renewed and gangrene sets in, often as not you find your man pegging about on his stumps.

We have a well-known local name for him down the town. the river, we call him the Moudier's Cranes. You see, I persuaded the governor only to best Donato on one foot. On one foot, the Mudeer's Crane, the large man turned purple to the top of his bald head, would you mind giving me the local word for Mudeer's cranes? From a too well-stocked memory, the inspector drew one short adhesive word with surprises by itself even unblushing Ethiopia. He spelt it out, saw the large man ride it down on his cuff and withdraw. Then the inspector translated a few of its significations and implications to the four masters of foxhounds. He left three days later with eight couple of the best hounds in England, a free and a friendly and an ample gift

from four packs to the Gihon hunt. He had honestly meant to undeceive the large blue-mottled man, but somehow forgot about it. The new draft marks a a new chapter in the Hunts history. From an isolated phenomena in a barge, it became a permanent institution with brick-built kennels ashore and an influence social, political, and administrative could terminus with the boundaries of province. Ben, the governor, departed to England where he kept a pack of real dainty hounds, but never ceased to log for the old lawless lot. His successors were ex officio masters of the Gihon hunt, as all inspectors were whips. For one reason, Farag, the kennel huntsman and khaki and putties, would obey nothing under the rank of an

excellency, and the hounds would obey no one but farag. For another, the best way of estimating crock returns and revenues was by riding straight to hounds. For a third, though judges down the river issued signed and sealed land titles to all lawful owners, yet public opinion along the river never held any such title valid till it had been confirmed, according to the precedent, by the governor's hunting crop in the hunting field above the willfully neglected earth. True, the ceremony had been cut down to three mere taps on the shoulder, but governors who tried to evade that much found themselves, and the ceremony, their office compassed about with a great cloud of witnesses who took up their time with lawsuits

and, worse still, neglected the puppies. The older sheikhs indeed stood out for the unmeasurable beatings of the old days. The sharper the punishment they argued, the sure of the title. But here the land of modern progress was against them, and they contented themselves with telling tales of Ben the first governor, whom they called the father of water wheels, and of that heroic age when men, horses, and hounds were worth following. This same modern progress, which brought dog biscuits and brass water taps to the kennels, was at work all over the world. Forces, activities, and movements sprang into being, agitated themselves, coalesced and in one political avalanche, overwhelmed a bewildered, and not in the least intending it, England. The echoes of the new

era were born into the province and the wings of inexplicable cables. The Guyan Hunt read speeches and sentiments and policies which amazed them, and they thanked God prematurely, that their province was too far off, too hot, and too hard-worked to be reached by those speakers or their policies. But they, with others, underestimated the scope and purpose of the new era. One by one, the provinces of the empire were hauled up and and baited, hit and held, lashed under the belly and forced back on their haunches for the amusement of their new masters in the parish of Westminster. One by one they fell away, sore and angry, to compare stripes with each other at the end of the uneasy earth. Even so, the Guillaume hunt,

like Abu Hussein in the old days, did not understand. Then it reached them through the press that they habitually flogged to death good revenue-paying cultivators who neglected to stop earths, but that the very few who did not die under hippo-hide whips soaked in caperis, walked about on their gangrenous ankle-bones, and were known in derision as the Mideers' Cranes. The charges were vouched for in the House of Commons by a Mr. Lettabbe, groom-bride, who had formed a committee and was disseminating literature. The province groaned. The inspector, now an inspector of inspectors, whistled. He had forgotten the gentleman who sputtered in people's faces. He shouldn't have looked so like Bealvoy, was his sole defense when he met the governor at breakfast on the steamer after a meet.

You shouldn't have joked with an animal of that class, said Peter the governor. Look what frog has brought me. It was a pamphlet signed on behalf of a committee by a lady secretary, but, composed by some person who thoroughly understood the language of the province. After telling the tale of the beatings, it recommended all the beaten to institute criminal proceedings against their governor, and as soon as might be to rise against English oppression and tyranny. Such documents were new in Ethiopia in those days. The inspector read the last half-page, but he stammered, this is impossible. White men don't write the same. The sort of stuff? Don't they just? said the governor. They get made cabinet ministers for doing it, too.

I went home last year, I know. It'll blow over, said the inspector weekly. Not it. Groombright is coming down here to investigate the matter in a few days. For himself? The imperial government's behind him. Perhaps you would like to look at my orders? The governor laid down an uncoated cable. The whiplash to it ran. You won't. afford Mr. Groombright every facility for his inquiry and will be held responsible that no obstacles are put in his way to the fullest possible examination of any witnesses which he may consider necessary. He will be accompanied by his own interpreter who must not be tampered with. That's to me, governor of the province, said Peter the governor. It seems about enough, the inspector

answered. Farag kennel huntsman entered the saloon as was his privilege. My uncle, who was beaten by the father of water-wheels would approach, O Excellency, he said, and there are others on the bank. Admit, said the governor. There trampled a porridge, shakes and villages to the number of seventeen. In each man's hand was a copy of the pamphlet, in each man's eye, terror, and uneasiness of the sword, that governors spend and are spent to clear away. Forag's uncle, now shake of the village, spoke. It is written in this book, Excellency, that the beatings whereby we hold our lands are all valueless. It is written that every man who received such a beating from the father of water wheels who slow their mirrors should instantly begin a lawsuit because

the title to his land is still valid. It is so written. We do not wish lawsuits. We wish to hold the land as it was given to us after the days of the oppression they cried. The governor glanced at the inspector. This was serious. To cast doubt on the ownership of the land means in Ethiopia, letting in of waters and the getting out of troops. Your titles are good, said the governor, the inspector confirmed with a nod. Then what is the meaning of these writings which came from down the river where the judges are? Farah's uncle waved his copy. By whose order are we ordered to slay you, O Excellency, our governor?

It is not written that you are to slave me. Not in those very words, but we leave an earth unstopped. It is the same as though we wish to save Abu Hussein from the hounds. writings say, abolish your rulers. How can we abolish except we kill? We hear rumors of one who comes from down the river soon to lead us to kill. Fools, said the governor, your titles are good. This is madness. It is so written, they answered like a pack. Listen, said the inspector smoothly, I know who caused the writings to be written and sent. He is a man of blue-mottled gels in aspect like Bigelby who ate unclean matters. He will come up the river and will give tongue

about the beatings. Will he impeach our land titles? An evil day for him? Go slow, Baker, the governor whispered. They'll kill him if they get scared about their land. I tell a parable. The inspector lit a cigarette. Declar which of you took to walk the children of milkmaid. Milik made first or second, said Farag quickly. The second, the one which was leaned by the thorn. No, no, Milik made the second strained her shoulder leaping my water channel. A shake cried. Milikmaid the first was named by the thorns on the day when our excellency fell thrice. True, true, the second milkmaid's mate was Malvolio, the pied hound, said the inspector. I had two of the second milkmaid's pups, said Farah's uncle. They died of madness in their ninth month. And how did they do

before they died? said the inspector. They ran about in the sun and slavery to the mouth, they died. Wherefore? God knows he sent the madness. It was no fault of mine. Thy own mouth had answered thee, the inspector laughed. It is with men as it is with dogs. God afflicts some with a madness. It is no fault of hours if such a man run about on the sun and frothed the mouth. The man who is coming will emit spray from his mouth and speaking and will always edge and push in towards his hearers. When you see him and hearing me, I will understand that he is afflicted of God, being mad. He is in God's hands. But our titles, are our titles to our lands good? The crowd repeated. Your titles are in my hands. They're good, said the governor. And he who wrote the

writings is an afflicted of God to Farah's uncle? The inspector had said it, cried the governor. You'll see when the man comes, oh, shakes in men. Have we ridden together and walked puppies together and bought and sold barley for the horses that after these years we should run riot on the scent of a madman, and afflicted of God? But the hunt pays us to kill mad jackal, said Faro's uncle, and he who questions my titles to my land. Ah,

where a riot, the governor's hunting crop cracked like a three-pounder. By Allah, you thundered, if the afflicted of God come to any harm at your hands, I myself will shoot every hound and every puppy and the hunt shall ride no more. On your heads be it,

go in peace and tell the others. The hunt shall ride no more, said pharaoh's uncle and how can the land be governed no no o excellency our governor we will not harm a hair on the head of the afflicted of god he shall be to us as is abu hussein's wife in the breeding season when they were gone the governor mopped his forehead we must put a few soldiers in every village to scroombride visits baker tell him to keep out of sight and have an eye on the villagers he's drawing him rather high oh excellently said the smooth voice of farrag laying the field and country life square on the table is the afflicted of god who resembles bigel by one with the man whom the inspector met in the great house in england and to whom he told the tale of the mudeer's crane the same man farrague said the inspector i have often heard the inspector tell the tale to our excellency at feeding time in the kennels but since i am in the government service i have never told it to my people may i lose that tale among the villagers the governor nodded no harm said he The details of Mr. Groombride's arrival with his interpreter, whom he proposed should eat with him at the governor's table, his allocution to the governor on the new movement, and the sins of imperialism I purposely admit. At three in the afternoon, Mr. Groom's bride said, I will go out now and address your victims in this village. Won't you find it rather hot? said the governor, they generally take a nathlet's sunset at this time of the year.

Mr. Groom Bride's large, loose lips said that, he replied pointedly, would be enough to decide me. I fear you have not quite mastered your instructions. May I ask you to send for my interpreter? I hope he has not been tampered with by your subordinates. He was a yellowish boy called Abdul, who had well eaten and drunk with Farag. The inspector, by the way, was not present at the meal. At whatever risk I shall go unattended, said Mr. Groombride. your presence would cow them from giving evidence. Abdul, my good friend, would you very kindly opened the umbrella? He passed up the gangplank to the village,

and with no more prelude than a Salvation Army picket in a Portsmouth slum cried, Oh, my brothers! He did not guess how his path had been prepared. The village was widely awake. Farag and loose-flowing garments, quite unlike Kennel's huntsman's cocky and pities, leaned against the wall of his uncle's house. come and see the afflicted of god he cried musically whose face indeed resembles that of bickleby the village came and decided that on the whole farrague was right i can't quite catch what they're saying said mr groomswright they're very much pleased to see you sir abdul interpreted

then i do think they might have sent a deputation to the steamer but i suppose they were frightened of the officials tell them not to be frightened abdul he says you are not to be frightened abdil he says you are not to be frightened abd said, a child he has spluttered with laughter. Refereing from mirth, for our cried, the afflicted of God is the guest of the excellency our governor. We are responsible for every hair of his head. He has none, a voice spoke. He has the white and shining man. Now tell them what I have come for, Abdul,

and please keep the umbrella well up. I think I shall reserve myself for my little vernacular speech at the end. Approach, look, listen, Abdul chanting. the afflicted of God will now make sport presently he will speak in your tongue and will consume you with mirth i have been his servant for three weeks i will tell you about his undergarments and his perfumes for his head he told them at length and didst thou take any of his perfume bottles said farrague at the end i am his servant i took two abdil replied ask him said farag's uncle what he knows about our land titles ye young men are all alike he waved the pamphlet. Mr. Groom's bride's smile to see how the seeds sown in London had borne fruit by Gihon. Lo, all the seniors held copies of the pamphlet. He knows less than a buffalo. He told me on the steamer that he was driven out of his own land by Demoakarazi, which is the devil

inhabiting crowds and assemblies, said Abdul. Allah between us and evil, a woman cackled from the darkness of a hut. Come in, children, he may have the evil eye. No, my eyes. No, my eyes. aunt said farrag no afflicted of god has an evil eye wait till you hear his mirth provoking speech which he will deliver i have heard it twice from abdul they seem very quick to grasp the point how far have you got abdul all about the beating sir they're highly interested don't forget about the local self-government and please hold umbrella over me it is hopeless to destroy unless one first builds up he may not have the evil eye farrag's uncle grunted but his devil led him too certainly to question my land title ask him whether he still doubts my land title or mine or mine cried the elders what odds he is an afflicted of god farrag called remember the tale i told you yes but he is an englishman and doubtless of influence or our excellency would not entertain him bid the down-country jackass ask him sarah said abdul these people much fearing they may be turned out of of their land in consequence of your remarks. Therefore, they ask you to make promise no bad consequences

following your visit. Mr. Groombride held his breath and turned purple. Then he stamped his foot. Tell them, he cried, that if a hair of any one of their heads that's touched by an official, on any account, whatever, all England shall ring with it. Good God, what callous oppression. The dark places of the earth are full of cruelty. He wiped his face and throwing out his arms, cried, tell them, oh, tell the poorest serfs not to be afraid of me. Tell them I come to address their wrongs, not heaven knows to add to their burden. The long-drawn, gurgle of the practice public speaker pleased them much. That is how though new water-tap runs out in the kennel, said Farag, the excellency our governor entertains him that he may make sport. Make him say the

mirth-moving speech. What did he say about my land titles? Farag's uncle was not to be turned. He says, Farag, interpreted, that he desires nothing better than you should live on your lands in peace. He talks as though he believed himself to be governor. Well, we here are all witnesses to what he has said. Now go forward with the sport. Farag's uncle smoothed his garments. How diversely had Allah made his creatures? On one he bestow's strength to slay amirs, another he causes to go mad and wander in the sun like the afflicted sons of Malik made.

Yes, and to emit spray from the men, as the inspector told us all will happen as the inspector foretold said farrague i've never yet seen the inspector thrown out during any run i think abdow plucked at mr groom's bride's sleeves i think perhaps it is better now sir if you give your fine little native speech they not understanding english but much pleased at your condescensions condescensions mr groom bride spun around if they only knew how i felt towards them in my heart if i could express a tith of my feelings i must stay here and learn the language hold of the umbrella abdul i think my little speech will show them i know something of their vying time it was a short simple carefully learned address and accent supervised by abdul and the steamer allowed the hearers to guess its meaning which was a request to see one of the madeers cranes since the desire of the speaker's life the object to which he would consequent his days was to improve the condition of the madeier's cranes but first he must behold them with his own eyes with then his brethren whom he loved shuner moudeers crane whom he desired to love once twice and again in his peroration he repeated his demand using always that they might see he was acquainted with their local argot using always i say the word which the inspector had given him in england long ago the shirt-edesive word which by itself surprised even unglushing ethiopia There are limits to the supplying politeness of an ancient people. A bulky blue-chinned man in white clothed, his name red-lettered across his lower shirt-front, spluttering from under a green-line umbrella,

almost tearful appeals to be introduced to the unintroducible, naming loudly the unnameable, dancing as it seemed in perverse joy at Mary mention of the unmentionable, found those limits. There was a moment's hush, and then such mirth as Guillaume through his centuries had never heard. A roar like the roar of his own cataracts and flood. Children cast themselves on the ground and rolled back and forth, cheering and whooping.

Strong men, their faces hid in their clothes, swayed and silenced, till the agony became unsupportable, and they threw up their hands and bade at the sun. Women, mothers, and virgins shrilled shriek upon mounting, tried to draw breath. Some half-strangled voice would quack out the word and the riot began afresh. Last to fall was the city-trained Abdul.

He held on to the edge of apoplexy, then collapsed, throwing an umbrella from him. Mr. Groombread should not be judged too harshly. Exercise and strong emotion under a hot sun. The shock of public ingratitude for the moment ruwed his spirit. He furled the umbrella and weathered beat the prostate Abdul, crying that he had been betrayed, in which posture the inspector on horseback, followed by the governor suddenly found him. That's all very well, said the inspector, when he had taken Abdul's dramatically dying depositions on the steamer. but you can't hammer a native merely because he laughs at you. I see nothing for it but the law to take its course.

You might reduce the charge to tampering with an interpreter, said the governor. Mr. Groombride was far too gone to be comforted. It's the publicity that I fear, he wailed. Is there no possible means of hushing up the affair? You don't know what a question. A single question in the house means to a man of my position. The ruin of my political career, I assure you. I shouldn't have imagined it, said the governor, and though perhaps i ought not to say it i am not without honour in my own country or influence a word in season as you know your excellency it might carry an official far the governor shuddered yes that had to come too he said to himself well look here if i tell this man of yours to withdraw the charge against you you can go to gahena for a-a-carre care the only condition i make is that if you write i suppose that's part of your business about your travels you don't praise me So far, Mr. Groombred has loyally adhered to this understanding. End of Section 13. Section 14 of actions and reactions.

This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Cornell Nemesh in Reno, Nevada. Actions and Reactions by Rudyard Kipling. Galliose song. All day long to the judgment seat, the crazed provincials drew all day long at their rulers' feet howled.

for the blood of the jew insurrection with one accord bended itself and walk and paul was about to open his mouth when akaya's deputy spoke whether the god descend from above or the man ascend upon high whether the smaker of tents be jove or a young Deity, I will be no judge between your gods and your godless bickerings. Lictor, drive them hands with rods. I care for none of these things. Where is a question of lawful do or a laborer's hire denied? reason would I should bear with you and order it well to be tried. But this is a question of words and names. And I know the strife it brings. I will not pass upon any your claims.

I care for none of these things. One thing only I see most clear. As I pray you also see. Claudius Caesar had set me here Rome's deputy to be. It is her peace that ye go to break, not mine, nor any kings, but touching your clamor of conscience sake, I care for none of these things. End of Section 14.

Recording by Cornell Nemesh in Reno, Nevada. Section 15 of actions and reactions. This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain for more information, or to find. volunteer please visit libravox.org. Actions and Reactions by Rudyard Kipling. The House Surgeon

On an evening after Easter Day, I sat at a table in a homeward-bound steamer's smoking-room where half a dozen of us told ghost stories, as our party broke up a man playing patience in the next alcove said to me, I didn't quite catch the end of that last story about the curse on the family's firstborn. It turned out to be drains, I explained, as soon as new ones were put into the house the curse was lifted i believe i never knew the people myself ah i've had my drains up twice i'm on gravel too

you don't mean to say you've a ghost in your house why didn't you join our party any more orders gentlemen before the bar closes the steward interrupted sit down again and have one with me said the patience player no it isn't a ghost our trouble is more depression than anything else how interesting then it's nothing any one can see it's it's nothing worse than a little depression and the odd part is that there hasn't been a death in the house since it was built in eighteen sixty three the lawyer said so that decided me my good lady rother and he made me pay an extra thousand for it how curious unusual too i said yes ain't it it was built for three sisters moultrie was the main three old maids they all lived together the eldest owned it i bought it from her lawyer a few years ago and if i've spent a pound on the place first and last i must have spent five thousand electric light new servants wing garden all that sort of thing a man in his family ought to be happy after so much expense ain't it he looked at me through the bottom of his glass does it affect your family much my good lady she's a greek by the way and myself are middle-aged we can bear up against depression but it's hard on my little girl i say little but she's twenty we send her visiting to escape it she almost lived at hotels and hydros last year but that isn't pleasant for her she used to be a canary a perfect canary always singing you ought to hear her she doesn't sing now that sort of thing's unwholesome for the young ain't it can't you get rid of the place i suggested not except at a sacrifice and we're fond of it just suits us three we'd love it if we were allowed what do you mean by not being allowed

i mean because of the depression it spoils everything what's it like exactly i couldn't very well explain it must be seen to be appreciated as the auctioneers say now i was much impressed by the story you were telling just now it wasn't true i said my tale is true if you would do me the pleasure to come down and spend a night at my little place you'd learn more than you would if i talked till morning very likely to wouldn't touch your good self at all you might be immune ain't it on the other hand if this influenza influence does happen to affect you why i think it will be an experience while he talked he gave me his card and i read his name was l maxwell maloud esq of holmescroft a city address was tucked away in a corner my business he added used to be furs if you are interested in furs i've given thirty years of my life to em you're very kind i murmured far from it i assure you i can meet you next saturday afternoon anywhere in london you choose to name and i'll be only too happy to motor you down it ought to be a delightful run at this time of year the rhododendrons will be out i mean it you don't know how truly i mean it very probably it won't affect you at all and i think i may say i have the finest collection of narwhal tusks in the world all the best skins and horns have to go through l mowell moward he knows where they come from and where they go to that's his business for the rest of the voyage up channel mr mallowed talked to of the assembling preparation and sale of the rarer furs and told me things about the manufacture of fur-line coats which quite shocked me somehow or other when we landed on wednesday i found myself pledged to spend that weekend with him at holmes on saturday he met me with a well-groomed motor and ran me out in an hour and a half to an exclusive residential district of dustless roads and elegantly designed country villas each standing in from a-half to an exclusive residential district of dustless roads and elegantly designed country villas each standing in from a

three to five acres of perfectly appointed land he told me land was selling at eight hundred pounds the acre and the new golf links whose queen and pavilion we passed nearly twenty-four thousand pounds to create holmescroft was a large two-storied low creeper-covered residence a veranda at the south side gave on to a garden and two tennis courts separated by a tasteful iron fence from a most park-like meadow of five or six acres where two jersey cows grazed tea was ready in the shade of a promising copper beach and i could see groups on the lawn of young men and maidens appropriately clothed playing lawn tennis in the sunshine a pretty scene ain't it said mr maloud my good lady sitting under the tree and that's my little girl in pink on the far court but i'll take you to your room and you can see em all later he led me through a wide parquet floored hall furnished in pale lemon with huge cloisonais vases an ebonized and gold grand piano and banks of pop flowers and bernara's brass bowls up a pale oak staircase to a spacious landing where there was a green velvet settee trimmed with silver the blinds were down and the light lay in parallel lines on the floors he showed me my room saying cheerfully you may be a little tired one often is without knowing it after a run through traffic don't come down till you feel quite restored we shall all be in the garden my room was rather warm and smelt of perfumed soap i threw up the window at once but it opened so close to the floor

and worked so clumsily that i came within an ace of pitching out where i should certainly have ruined a rather lot-sided laburnum below as i said about washing off the journey's dust i began to feel a little tired but i reflected i had not come down here in this weather and among these new surroundings to be depressed so i began to whistle and it was just then that i was aware of a little gray shadow as it might have been a snowflake seen against the light floating at an immense distance in the background of my brain it annoyed me and i shook my head to get rid of it then my brain telegraphed that it was the forerunner of a swift striding gloom which there was yet time to escape if i would force my thoughts away from it as a man leaping for life forces his body forward and away from the fall of a wall but the gloom overtook me before i could take in the meaning of the message i moved toward the bed every nerve already aching with the foreknowledge of the pain that was to be dealt it and sat down while my amazed and angry soul dropped gulf by gulf into that horror of great darkness which is spoken of in the bible and which as auctioneers say must be experienced to be appreciated despair upon despair misery upon misery fear after fear each causing their distinct and separate woe packed in upon me for an unrecorded length of time until at last they blurred together and i heard a click in my brain like the click in the ear when one descends in a diving-bell and i knew that the pressures were equalized within and without and that for the moment the worst was at an end but i knew also that at any moment the darkness might come down anew and while i dwelt on this speculation precisely as a man torments a raging tooth with his tongue it ebbed away into the little gray shadow on the brain

of its first coming and once more i heard my brain which knew what would recur telegraph to every quarter for health release or diversion the door opened and aloud reappeared i thanked him politely saying i was charmed with my room anxious to meet mrs mallowed much refreshed with my wash and so on and so forth beyond a little stickiness at the corners of my mouth it seemed to me that i was managing my words admirably a while that i myself cowered at the bottom of unclimable pits maloud laid his hand on my shoulder and said you've got it now already ain't it yes i answered it's making me sick it will pass off when you come outside i give you my word it will then pass off come i shambled out behind him and wiped my forehead in the hall you mustn't mind he said i expect the run tired you my good lady is sitting there under the copper beach she was a fat woman in an apricot-colored gown with a heavily pouted face against which her black long-lashed eyes showed like currants and dough i was introduced to many fine ladies and gentlemen of those parts magnificently appointed landauze and covered motors swept in and out of the drive and the air was gay with the merry outcries of the tennis players as twilight drew on they all went away and i was left alone with mr and mrs mullaud while tall men-servants and maid-servants took away the tennis and tea things miss millaud had walked a little down the drive with a light-haired young man

who apparently knew everything about every south american railway stock he had told me at tea that these were the days of financial specialization i think it went off beautifully my dear said mr mullaud to his wife and his wife and-he had told me at tea that these were the days of financial specialization i think it went off beautifully my dear said mr milaud to his wife and to me you feel all right now ain't it of course you do mrs mallowed surged across the gravel her husband skipped nimbly before her into the south veranda turned a switch and all holmes croft was flooded with life you can do that from your room also he said as they went in there is something in money ain't it miss milaud came up behind me in the dusk we have not yet been introduced she said but i suppose you are staying the night your father was was kind enough to ask me i replied she nodded yes i know and you know too don't you i saw your face when you came to shake hands with mamma you felt the depression very soon it is simply frightful in that bedroom sometimes what do you think it is bewitchment in greece where i was a little girl it might have been but not in england do you think or do you cheer up thea it will all come right he insisted no papa she shook her dark head nothing is right while it comes it is nothing that we ourselves have ever done in our lives that i will swear to you said mrs mallowed suddenly and we have changed our servants several times so we know it is not them never mind let us enjoy ourselves while we can said mr mallod opening the champagne but we did not enjoy ourselves the talk failed there were long silences i beg your pardon i said for i thought some one at my elbow was about to speak ah that is the other thing said miss milad her mother groaned we were silent again and in a few seconds it must have been

a live grief beyond words not ghostly dread or horror but aching helpless grief overwhelmed us each i felt according to his or her nature and held steady like the beam of a burning glass behind that pain i was conscious there was a desire on somebody's part to explain something on which some tremendously important issue hung meantime i rolled bread pills and remembered my sins maloud considered his own reflection in a spoon his wife seemed to be praying and the girl fidgeted desperately with hands and feet till the darkness passed on as though the malignant rays of a burning glass had been shifted from us there said miss malout half rising now you see what makes a happy home oh sell it sell it father mine and let us go away but i've spent thousands on it you shall go to harrogate next week thea dear i'm only just back from hotels i'm so tired of packing cheer up thea it is over you know it does not often come here twice in the same night i think we shall dare now to be comfortable he lifted a dish cover and helped his wife and daughter his face was lined and fallen like an old man's after debauch but his hand did not shake and his voice was clear as he worked to restore us by speech and action he reminded me of a gray muzzled collie herding demoralized sheep after dinner we sat round the dining-room fire the drawing-room might have been under the shadow for aught we knew talking with the intimacy of gipsies by the wayside or of wounded comparing notes after a skirmish by eleven o'clock the three between them had given me every name and detail they could recall that in any way bore on the house and what they knew of its history

we went to bed in a fortifying blaze of electric life my one fear was that the blasting gust of depression would return the surest way of course to bring it i lay awake till dawn breathing quickly and sweating lightly beneath what de quincey inadequately describes as the oppression of inexpeiable guilt now as soon as the lovely day was broken i fell into the most terrible of all dreams that joyous one in which all past evil has not only been wiped out of our lives but has never been committed and in the very bliss of our assured innocence before our love's shriek and change countenance we wake to the day we have earned it was a coolish morning but we preferred to breakfast in the south veranda the forenoon we spent in the garden pretending to play games that come out of boxes such as croquet and clock golf but most of the time we drew together and talk a young man who knew all about south american railways took miss milad for a walk in the afternoon and at five milad thoughtfully whirled us all up to dine in town now don't say you will till the psychological society and bet you will come again said miss milad as we parted because i know you will not you should not say that said her mother you should say good-bye mr percyus come again not him the girl cried he has seen the medusa's head looking at myself in the restaurant's mirrors it seemed to me that i had not much benefited by my week-end next morning i wrote out all my holmes cross-notes at fullest length in the hope that by so doing i could put it all behind me but the experience worked on my mind as they say certain imperfectly understood ray's work on the body i am less calculated to make her sherlock holmes than any man i know

for i lacked both method and patience yet the idea following up the trouble to its source fascinated me i had no theory to go on except a vague idea that i had come between two poles of a discharge and had taken a shock meant for someone else this was followed by a feeling of intense irritation i waited cautiously on myself expecting to be overtaken by horror of the supernatural but my self- persisted in being humanly indignant exactly as though it had been the victim of a practical joke it was in great pains and upheavals that i felt in every fiber but its dominant idea to put it coarsely was to get back a bit of its own by this i knew that i might go forward if i could find the way after a few days it occurred to me to go to the office of mr j m m baxter the solicitor who had sold holmescroft to milad i explained that i had some notion of buying the place would he act for me in the matter mr baxter a large grayish throaty voiceman showed no enthusiasm i sold it to mr millaud he said it had scarcely due for me to start on the running-down tack now but i can recommend i know he's asking an awful price i interrupted and atop of it he wants an extra thousand for what he calls your clean bill of health mr baxter sat up in his chair i had all his attention your guarantee with the house don't do you remember it yes yes that no death had taken place in the house since it was built i remember perfectly he did not gulp as untrained men do when they lie but his jaws moved stickily and his eyes turning towards the deed's boxes on the wall dulled i counted seconds one two three one two three up to ten a man i knew can live through ages of mental depression in that time i remember perfectly his mouth opened a little as though it had tasted old bitterness

of course that sort of thing doesn't appeal to me i went on i don't expect to buy a house free from death certainly not no one does but it was mr malod's fancy his wife's rather i believe and since we could meet it it was my duty to my clients at whatever cost to my own feelings to make him pay that's really why i came to you i understood from him you knew the place well oh yes always did it originally belonged to some connections of mine the mrs moultrie i suppose how interesting it must have loved the place before the country round about was built up they were very fond of it indeed i don't wonder so restful and sunny i don't see how they could have brought themselves to part with it now it is one of the most constant peculiarities of the english that in polite conversation and i had striven to be polite no one ever does or sells anything for mere money's sake miss agnes the youngest fell ill he spaced his words of the words of little and as they were very much attached to each other that broke up the home naturally i fancied it must have been something of that kind one doesn't associate the staffordshire multrees my demon of irresponsibility at that instant created him with with being hard up i don't know whether we're related to them he answered importantly we may be for our branch of the family comes from the midlands i give this talk at length because i am so proud of my first attempt at detective work when i left him twenty minutes later with instructions to move against the owner of holmescroft with a view to purchase i was more bewildered than any dr watson at the opening of a story why should a middle-aged solicitor turn plover's egg-color and drop his jaw when reminded of so innocent infestile a matter as that no death had ever occurred in a

house that he had sold if i knew my english vocabulary at all the tone in which he said the youngest sister fell ill meant that she had gone out of her mind that might explain his change of countenance and it was just possible that her demented influence still hung about holmescroft but the rest was beyond me i was relieved when i reached maloud's city office and could tell him what i had done not what i thought milaud was quite willing to enter into the game of the pretended purchase but did not see how it would help if i knew baxter he's the only living soul i can get at who was connected with holmescroft i said ah living soul is good at any rate our little girl will be pleased that you are still interested in us won't you come down some day this week how is it there now i asked he screwed up his face simply frightful he said thea is at droid which i should like it immensely but i must cultivate baxter for the present you'll be sure and keep him busy your end won't you he looked at me with quiet contempt do not be afraid i shall be a good jew i shall be my own solicitor before a fortnight was over baxter admitted ruefully that mallowed was better than most firms in the business we buyers were coy argumentative shocked at the price of holmescroft inquisitive and coal-by turns but mr malod the cellar easily met and surpassed us and mr baxter entered every letter telegram and consultation at the proper rates in a cinematograph film of a bill

at the end of a month he said it looked as though maloud thanks to him were really going to listen to reason i was many pounds out of pocket but i had learned something of mr baxter on the human side i deserved it never in my life have i worked to conciliate amused and flatter a human being as i worked over my solicitude it appeared that he golfed therefore i was an enthusiastic beginner anxious to learn twice i invaded his office with a bag maloud lent it for of a spellikins needed in the detestable game and a vocabulary to match the third time the ice-poke and mr baxter took me to his links quite ten miles off where in a maze of tramway lines railroads and nursery maids we skilped our divoted way round nine holes like barges plunging through head seas he played vilely and had never expected to meet any one worse but as he realized my form i think he began to like me for he took me in hand by the two hours together after a fortnight he could give me no more than a stroke a hole and when with this allowance i once managed to beat him by one he was honestly glad and assured me that i should be a golfer if he was honestly glad and assured me that i should be a golfer if i stuck to it i was sticking to it for my own ends but now and again my conscience pricked me for the man was a nice man between games he supplied me with odd pieces of evidence such as that he had known the mulchries all his life being their cousin and that miss mary the eldest was an unforgiving woman who would never let bygones be i naturally wondered what she might have against him and somehow connected him unfavourably with mad agnes people ought to forgive and forget eve volunteered one day between rounds specially where in the nature of things they can't be sure of their deductions don't you think so it all depends on the nature of the evidence on which one forms one's judgment i answered

nonsense he cried i'm lawyer enough to know that there's nothing in the world so misleading as circumstantial evidence never was why have you ever seen men hanged on it hanged people have been supposed to be eternally lost on it his face turned gray again i don't know how it is with you but my conservation is that god must know he must things that seem on the face of em like murder or say suicide may appear different to god eh that's what the murderer and the suicide can always hope i suppose i've expressed myself clumsily as usual the facts as god knows em may be different even after the most clinching evidence i've always said that both as a loyal and a man but some people won't i don't want to judge em we'll say they can't believe it whereas i say there's always a working chance a certainty that the worst hasn't happened he stopped and cleared his throat now let's come on this time next week i shall be taking my holiday what links i asked carelessly while twins in a perambra later got out of our line of fire a potty little nine-hole affair at a hydro in the midlands my cousin stay there always will not but what the fourth and the seventh holes take some doing you could manage it though he said encouragingly you're doing much better it's only your approach shots that are weak you're right i can't approach for nuts i shall go to peace as well you're away with no one to coach me i said mournfully i haven't taught you anything he said delighted with a compliment i owe all i've learned to you anyhow when will you come back look here he began i don't know your engagements but i've no one to play with at bury mills never have why couldn't you take a few days off and join me there i warn you it will be rather dull it's a throat and gout-place baths

massage electricity and so forth but the fourth and the seventh holes really takes some doing i'm for the game i answered valiantly heaven well knowing that i hated it every stroke and word of it that's the proper spirit as their lawyer i must ask you not to say anything to my cousins about holmescroft it upsets them always did but speaking as man to man it would be very pleasant for me if you could see your way too i saw it as soon as decency permitted and thanked him sincerely according to my now well-developed theory he had certainly misappropriated his aged cousin's monies under power of attorney and had probably driven poor agnes moultrie out of her wits but i wished that he was not so gentle and good-tempered and innocent eyed before i joined him at bury mills hydro i spent a night at holmes miss maloud had returned from her hydro and first we made very merry on the open lawn in the sunshine over the manners and customs of the english resorting to such places she knew dozens of hydros and warned me how to behave in them while mr mrs maloud stood aside and adored her ah that's the way she always comes back to us he said pity it wears off so soon ain't it you ought to hear her sing with mirth thou pretty bird we had the house to face through the evening and there we neither laughed nor sung the gloom fell on us as we entered and did not shift till ten o'clock when we crawled as it were from beneath it it has been bad this summer said mrs mowl in a whisper after we realized that we were freed sometimes i think the house will get up and cry out it is so bad how

have you forgotten what comes after the depression so then we waited about the small fire and the dead air in the room presently filled and pressed down upon us with the sensation but words are useless here as though some dumb and bound power were striving against gag and bond to deliver its soul of an arson articulate word it passed in a few minutes and i fell to thinking about mr baxter's conscience and agnes moultrie gone mad in the well-lit bedroom that awaited me these reflections secured me a night during which i rediscovered how from purely mental causes a man can be physically sick but the sickness was bliss compared to my dreams when the birds waked on my departure malau gave me a beautiful narwhal's horn much as a nurse gives a child sweets for being bull brave as of dentists there's no duplicate of it in the world he said else it would have come to old max malad and he tucked it into the motor miss malad on the far side of the car whispered have you found out anything mr i shook my head then i shall be chained to my rock all my life she went on only don't tell papa i suppose she was thinking of the young gentleman who specialised in south american rails for i noticed a ring on the third finger of her left hand i went straight from that house to bury mills hydro keen for the first time in my life on playing golf which is guaranteed to occupy the mind baxter had taken me a room communicating with his own and after lunch introduced me to a tall horse-headed elderly lady of decided manners whom a white-haired maid pushed along in a bath-chair through the park-like grounds of the hydro she was miss mary mulchrey and she coughed and cleared her throat just like baxter she suffered she told me it was a mulchry cast mark from some obscure form of chronic bronchitis

complicated with spasm of the glottis and in a dead flat voice with a sunken eye that looked and saw not told me what washes gargles pastilles and inhalations had proved most beneficial from her i was passed on to her younger sister miss elizabeth a small and withered thing with twitching lips victim she told me to very much the same sort of throat but secretly devoted to another set of medicines when she went away with baxter in the bath-chair i fell across a major of the indian army with gout in his glassy eyes and a stomach which he had taken all round the continent he laid everything before me and him i escaped only to be confided in by a matron with a tendency to follicular tonsillitis and eczema baxter waited hand and foot on his cousins till five o'clock trying as i saw to atone for his treatment of the dead sister miss mary ordered him about like a dog i warned you it would be dull he said when we met in the smoking-room it's tremendously interesting i said but how about a look round the links unluckily damp always affects my eldest cousin i've got to buy her a new bronchitis kettle arthur broke her old one yesterday we slipped out to the chemist's shop in the town and he bought a large glittering tin thing whose workings he explained i'm used to this sort of work i come up here pretty often he said i've the family throat too you're a good man i said a very good man he turned towards me in the evening light among the beaches and his face was changed to what it might have been a generation before you see he said huskily there was the youngest agnes before she fell ill you know but she didn't like leaving her sisters never would he hurried on with his odd-shaped load and left me among the ruins of my blackberries

the man with that face had done agnes mulchrey no wrong we never played our game i was waked between two and three in the morning from my hygienic bed by baxter in an ulster over orange and white pajamas which i should never have suspected from his character my cousin has had some sort of a seizure he said will you come i don't want to wake the doctor don't want to make a scandal quick so i came quickly and led by the white-haired arthur's in a jacket and petticoat entered a double-bedded room reeking with steam and friar's balsam the electrics were all on miss mary i knew her by her height was at the open window wrestling with miss elizabeth who gripped her round the knees miss mary's hand was at her own throat which was streaked with blood she's done it she's done it too miss elizabeth panted hold her hold her help me oh i say women don't cut their throats baxter whispered my god as she cut her throat the maid cried out and with no warning rolled over in a thing baxter pushed her under the wash basins and leaped to hold the gaunt woman who crowed and whistled as she struggled toward the window he took her by the shoulder and she struck out wildly all right she's only cut her hand he said wet towel quick while i got that he pushed her backward her strength seemed almost as great as his i swabbed at her throat when i could and found no mark then helped him to control her a little miss elizabeth leaped back to bed wailing like a child tie up her hand somehow said baxter don't let it drift about the place she he stepped on broken glass in his slippers she must have smashed a pain miss mary lurched towards the open window again dropped on her knees her head on the sill and lay quiet surrendering the cut hand to me what did she do baxter turned towards miss elizabeth in the far bed she was going to throw herself out of the window was the answer

i stopped her and sent arthur's for you oh we can never hold up our heads again miss mary writhed and fought for breath baxter found a shawl which he threw over her shoulders nonsense said he that isn't like mary but his face worked when he said it you wouldn't believe about aggie john perhaps you will now said miss elizabeth i saw her do it and she's cut her throat too she hasn't i said it's only her hand miss mary suddenly broke from us with an indescribable grunt flew rather than ran to her sister's bed and there shook her as one furious school-girl would shake another no such thing she croaked how dare you think so you wicked little fool get into bed mary said baxter you'll catch a chill she obeyed but sat up with the gray shawl round her lean shoulders glaring at her sister i'm better now she panted arthur's let me sit out too long where's arthur's the kettle never mind arthur said baxter you get the kettle i hastened to bring it from the side table now mary as god sees you tell me what you've done his lips were dry and he could not moisten them with his tongue miss mary applied herself to the mouth of the kettle and between indraws of steam said the spasm came on just now while i was asleep i was nearly choking to death so i went to the window i've done it often before without waking any one bessie's such an old mate about draughts i tell you i was choking to death i couldn't manage the catch and i nearly fell out that window opens too low i cut my hand trying to save myself who is tided up in this filthy handkerchief i wish you had had my throat bessie i never was nearer dying she scowled in us all impartially while her sister sobbed from the bottom of the bed we heard a quivering voice is she dead have they took her away oh i never could bear the sight of blood arthur said miss mary you are entirely go away

it is my belief that arthur has crawled out on all fours but i was busy picking up broken glass from the carpet then baxter seated by the side of the bed began to cross-examine in a voice i scarcely recognized no one could for an instant have doubted the genuine rage of miss mary against her sister her cousin or her maid and that a doctor should have been called in for she did me the honor of calling me doctor she was the last drop she was choking with her throat had rushed to the window for air had near pitched out and in catching at the window bars had cut her hand over and over she made this clear to the intent baxter then she turned on her sister in tongue lashed her savagely you mustn't blame me miss bessie faltered at last you know what we think of night and day i'm coming to that said baxter listen to me what you did mary misled four people into thinking you meant to do away with yourself isn't one suicide in the family enough oh god help and pity us you couldn't have believed that she cried the evidence was complete now don't you think baxter's finger wagged under her nose can't you think that poor aggie did the same thing at holmescroft when she fell out of the window she had the same throat said miss elizabeth exactly the same symptoms don't you remember mary which was her bedroom i asked the baxter in an undertone over the south veranda looking on to the tennis lawn i nearly fell out of that very window when i was at home's cropping it to get some air the sill doesn't come much above your knees i said you hear that mary mary do you hear what this gentleman says won't you believe that what nearly happened to you must have happened to poor aggie that night for god's sake for her sake mary won't you believe there was a long silence while the steam kettle puffed if i could have proof if i could have proof said she and broke into most horrible tears baxter motioned to me and i crept away to my room and lay awake till morning thinking more

especially of the dumb thing at holmescroft which reached to explain itself i hated miss mary's perfectly as though i had known her for twenty years but i felt that alive or death i should not like her to condemn me yet at midnight when i saw miss mary in her bath-chair arthur's behind and baxter and miss elizabeth on either side in the park-like grounds of the hydra i found it difficult to arrange my words now that you know all about it said baxter aside after the first strangeness of our meeting was over it is only fair to tell you that my poor cousin did not die in holmescroft at all she was dead when they found her under the window in the morning just dead under that laburnum outside the window i asked for i suddenly remembered the crooked evil thing exactly she broke the tree and falling but no death has ever taken place in the house so far as we are concerned you can make yourself quite easy on that point mr maloud's extra thousand for what you call the clean bill of health was something toward my cousin's estate when we sold it was my duty as their lawyer to get it for them at any cost to my own feelings i know better than to argue when the english talk about their duty so i agreed with my solicitor their sister's death must have been a great blow to your cousins i went on the bath-chair was behind me unspeakable baxter whispered they brooded on it day and night no wonder if their theory of poor aggie making away with herself was correct she was eternally lost do you believe that she made away with herself no thank god never have and after what happened to mary last night i see perfectly what happened to mary last night i see perfectly what happened to poor aggie she had the family throat too by the way mary thinks you are a doctor otherwise she wouldn't like your having been in her room very good is she convinced now about her sister's death

she'd give anything to be able to believe it but she's a hard woman and brooding along certain lines makes one groovy i have sometimes been afraid of her reason on the religious side don't you know elizabeth doesn't matter brain of a hen always had here arthur summoned me to the bath-chair and the ravaged face beneath its knitted shetland wool hood of miss mary moultrie i need not remind you a hope of the seal of secrecy absolute secrecy in your profession she began thanks to my cousins and my sister's stupidity you have found out she blew her nose please don't excite her sir said arthur's at the back but my dear miss moultrie i only know what i've seen of course but it seems to me that what you thought was a tragedy in your sister's case turns out on your own evidence so to speak to have been an accident a dreadfully sad one but absolutely an accident do you believe that too she cried or are you only saying it to comfort me i believe it from the bottom of my heart come down to holmes crawth for an hour for half an hour and satisfy your own of what you don't understand i see the house every day every night i'm always there in spirit waking or sleeping i couldn't face it in reality but you must i said if you go there in the spirit the greater need for you to go there in the flesh go to your sister's room once more and see the window i nearly fell out of it myself it's it's awfully low and dangerous that would convince you i pleaded yet aggie has slept in that room for years he interrupted you've slept in your room here for a long time haven't you but you nearly fell out of the window when you were choking that is true that is one thing true she nodded and i might have been killed as perhaps aggie was killed in that case your own sister and cousin and maid would have said you had committed suicide miss moultrie come down to holmescroft and go over the place just once you are lying she said quite quietly you don't want me to come down to see a window it is something else i warn you we are evangelicals we don't believe in prayers for the dead as the tree falls yes i dare say but you persist in thinking that your sister committed suicide no no i've always prayed that i might have misjudged her

arthur's at the bath-chair spoke up oh miss mary you would have hit from the first that poor miss aggie had made away with herself and of course miss bessie took the notion from you only master mr john stood out and an i've a-hade taken my babo if he was makin away with yourself last night miss mary leaned towards me one finger on my sleeve if going to holmescroft kills me she said you will have the murder of a fellow-creature on your conscience for all eternity i'll risk it i answered remembering what torment the mere reflection of her torments had cast on holmescroft and remembering above all the dumb thing that filled the house with its desire to speak i felt that there might be worse things baxter was amazed at the proposed visit but at a nod from that terrible woman went off to make arrangements then i sent a telegram to milad bidding him and his vacate holmescroft for that afternoon miss mary should be alone with her dead as i had been alone i expected untold trouble in transporting her but to do her justice the promise given for the journey she underwent it without murmur spasm or unnecessary word miss bessie pressed in a corner by the window wept behind her veil and from dime in time tried to take hold of her sister's hand baxter wrapped himself in his newly found happiness as selfishly as a bridegroom for he sat still and smiled so long as i know that aggie didn't make away with herself he explained i tell you frankly i don't care what happened she's as hard as a rock mary always was she won't die we let her out onto the platform like a blind woman and so got her into the fly the half-hour crawl to holmescroft was the most racking experience of the day mowled had obeyed my instruction there was no one visible in the house or the garden and the front door stood open miss mary rose from beside her sister stepped forth first and entered the hall come bessie she cried i daren't oh i daren't come her voice had altered i felt baxter start there's nothing to be afraid of

good heavens said baxter she's running up the stairs we'd better follow that's way below she's going to the room we heard the door of the bedroom i knew open and shut and we waited in the lemon-colored hall heavy with the scent of flowers i've never been into it since it was sold baxter sighed what a lovely restful place it is poor aggie used to arrange the flowers restful i began but stopped of a sudden for i felt all over my bruised soul that baxter was speaking truth it was a light spacious airy house full of the sense of well-being and peace above all things of peace i ventured into the dining-room where the thoughtful melods had left of small fire there was no terror there prezant or lurking and in the drawing-room which for good reasons we had never cared to enter the sun and the peace and the scent of the flowers worked together as is fit in an inhabited house when i returned to the hall baxter was sweetly asleep on a couch looking most unlike a middle-aged solicitor who had spent a broken night with an exact and cousin there was ample time for me to review it all to felicitate myself upon my magnificent acumen barring some errors about baxter as a thief and possibly a murderer before the door above opened and baxter evidently a light sleeper sprang away i've had a heavenly little nap he said rubbing his eyes with the backs of his hands like a child good lord that's not their step but it was i had never before been privileged to see the shadow turned backward on the dial the years ripped bodily off poor human shoulders old sunken eyes filled and the like harsh lips moistened and human john miss mary called i know now aggie didn't do it and she didn't do it echoed miss mary i did not think it wrong to say a prayer miss mary continued not for her soul but for our peace then i was convinced then we got conviction the younger sister piped we've misjudged poor aggie john but i feel she knows now wherever she is she knows that we know she is guiltless yes she knows i felt it too said miss elizabeth

i never doubted said john baxter whose face was beautiful at that hour not from the first never have you never offered me proof john now thank god it will not be the same any more i can think henceforward a vagu without sorrow she tripped absolutely tripped across the hall what ideas these jews have of arranging furniture she spied me behind a big cloisonab vase i've seen the window she said remotely you took great risk in advising me to undertake such a journey however as it turns out i forgive you and i pray you may never know what mental anguish means bessie look at this peculiar piano do you suppose doctor these people would offer one tea i miss mine i will go and see i said and explored milaud's new-built servants wing it was in the servants hall that i unearthed the maloud family bursting with anxiety tea for three quick i said if you ask me any questions now i shall have a fit so mrs milaud got it and i was butler amid murmured apologies from baxter still smiling and self-absorbed and the cold disapproval of miss mary who thought the pattern of the china vulgar however she ate well and even asked me whether i would not like a cup of tea for myself they went away in the twilight the twilight that i had once feared they were going to an hotel in london to rest after the fatigues of the day and as their fly turned down the drive i capered on the door doorstep with the all-darkened house behind me then i heard the uncertain feet of the mullahs and bade them not to turn on the lights but to feel to feel what i had done for the shadow was gone with a dumb desire in the air they drew short but afterwards deeper breaths like bathers entering chill water separated one from the other moved about the hall tiptoed upstairs raced down and then miss milan and i believe her mother though she denies this embrace me i know milaud did it was a disgraceful evening to say we rioted through the houses to put it mildly we played a sort of blind man's buff along the darkest passages in the unlighted drawing-room and little dining-room calling cheerily to each other after each exploration that here and here and here the trouble had removed itself

we came up to the bedroom mine for the night again and sat the women on the bed and we men on chairs drinking in blessed draughts of peace and comfort and cleanliness of soul while i told them my tail in full and received fresh praise thanks and blessings when the servants returned from their day's alley gave us a supper of cold-fried fish malade had sense enough to open no wine we had been practically drunk since nightfall and grew incoherent on water and milk i like that baxter said maloud he's a sharp man the death wasn't in the house but he ran it pretty close ain't it and the joke of it is that he supposes i want to buy the place from you i said are you selling not for twice what i paid for it now said milaud i'll keep you in furs all your life but not our holmescroft no never our holmescroft said miss miss milo we'll ask him here on tuesday mamma they squeezed each other's hands now tell me said mrs milau that tall one i saw out of the scullery window did she tell you she was always here in the spirit i hate her she made all this trouble it was not her house after she had sold it what do you think i suppose i answered she brooded over what she believed was her sister's suicide night and day she confessed she did and her thoughts being concentrated on this place they felt like a-like a burning glass burning glass is good said milad i said it was like a light of blackness turned on us cried the girl twiddling her ring that must have been when the tall one thought worse about her sister in the house ah the poor aggie said mrs milad the poor aggie trying to tell every one it was not so no wonder we felt something wished to say something via max do you remember that night we need not remember any more malod interrupted it is not our trouble they have told each other now do you think then miss milow that those two the living ones were actually told something upstairs in your in the room i can't say at any rate they were made happy and they ate a big tea afterwards as your father says it is not our trouble any longer thank god amen said me aloud now thea let us have some music after all these months with mirth

thou pretty bird ain't it you ought to hear that and in the half-lighted hall thea sang an old english song that i had never heard before with mirth thou pretty bird rejoice thy makers praise and hands lift up thy shrill and pleasant voice thy god is high advanced thy food before he did provide and gives it in a fitting side wherewith be thou sufficed why shouldst thou now unpleasant be thy wrath against god fenting that he a little bird made thee thy silly head tormenting because he made thee not a man o peace he hath well fought thereon Therewith be thou sufficest. End of Section 15. Section 16 of actions and reactions. This is a Lubrohox recording. All LibreFox recordings are in the public domain.

For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibreFox.org. Recording by phone. Actions and Reactions by Richard Kipling. The Rabbi's song. if thought can reach to heaven on heaven let it dwell for fear that thought be given like power to reach to hell for fear the desolation and darkness of thy mind perplex a habitation which thou hast left behind let nothing linger after no whispering ghosts remain in wall or beam or rafter of any hate or pain cleanse and call home thy spirit, deny her leaved cost on aught thy heirs inherit the shadow of her past. For think in all thy sadness what road our griefs may take, whose brain reflect our madness,

or whom our terrors shake. For think lest any languish by cause of thy distress, the arrows of our anguish fly farther than we guess. Our lives, our tears, as water, are spilled upon the ground. God giveth no man quarter, yet God a means hath found. Though faith and hope have vanished, and even love grows dim, a means whereby his banished be not expelled from him. End of Section 16. End of Actions and Reactions by Richard Kipling.