The rat was making for a bit of crumbled bank opposite, and Tommy stood up for better aim. The poet held his breath.

One foot more and the prey would be lost, but Tommy stood like a young statue--then whang; and slowly the rat turned over on his back and vanished from sight, to float presently--a swollen corpse--down the quiet stream.

"Well hit, sir," cried the poet.

Tommy turned with dancing eyes.

"Jolly nearly lost him," he said. "You should just see young Collins with a catty. He's miles better than me."

But the poet had remembered himself.

"Tommy," he said, huskily, "I--I don't approve of sport of this kind.

Cannot you aim at--at inanimate objects?"

"It's a jolly poor game," said Tommy--then holding out the wooden fork, with its pendant elastic.

"Have a try," he said.

The poet accepted a handful of ammunition.

"I must amuse the boy and enter into his sports as far as I may if I would influence his character," he said to himself.

Tommy stuck a clod of earth on a stick some few yards away, at which, for some time, the poet shot wildly enough.

Yet, with each successive attempt, the desire for success grew stronger within him, and when at last the clod flew into a thousand crumbs, he flushed with triumph, and had to wipe the dimness from his gla.s.ses.

Oh, poets! it is dangerous to play with fire.

Plop.

And another l.u.s.ty rat held bravely out into the stream.

"Oh, get him, get him!" cried Tommy, jumping up and down. "Lend me the catty. Let me have a shot. Do buck up."

But the poet waved him aside.

"There shall be no--" he hesitated.

This rat was surely uglier than the last.

"No unseemly haste," concluded the poet.

Did the rat scent danger? I know not, but, on a sudden, he turned back to shelter. And, alas, this was too much for even Principle and Conscience--and whang went the catapult, and lo, even as by a miracle (which, indeed, it surely was), the bullet found its mark.

And I regret to say that the vicar, leaning unnoticed on a neighbouring gate, heard the poet exclaim, with some exultation: "Got him."

"Oh, _well_ hit!" cried Tommy. "By Jove, that was a ripping shot."

The poet blushed at the praise--but alas for human pleasures, and notably stolen ones, for they are fleeting.

"Hullo," said a sonorous voice.

They both turned, and the vicar smiled.

The poet was hatless and flushed. From one hand dangled a catapult; in the other he clutched some convenient pebbles.

"Really," said the vicar, "I should never have thought it."

The poet sighed, and handed the weapon to Tommy.

"Run away now, old chap," he said, "and have a good time. I think I shall go home."

Tommy trotted off into the wood, and the vicar and the poet held back towards the village.

"How goes the experiment?" asked the former, magnanimously ignoring the scene he had just witnessed.

The poet shook his head.

"It is hard to say yet," he replied. "I have not seen any _marked_ development of the poetical and imaginative side of him--and he brings some very queer friends to my house. But he's a good boy, on the whole, and the holidays have only just begun."

In the village street they paused.

"I--I want to go to the post-office," said the poet.

"All right," said the vicar.

"Don't--please don't wait for me," said the poet.

"It's a pleasure," replied the vicar. "The day is fine and young, and it is also Monday. I am not busy."

"I really wish you wouldn't."

The vicar was a man of tact, and had known the poet since boyhood, so he bowed.

"Good day," he said, and strolled towards the parsonage.

The poet looked up and down the long, lazy street. There was no one in sight. Then he plunged into the little shop.

"Some elastic, please," he said, nervously. "Thick and square--for a catapult."

III

IN WHICH A HAT FLOATS DOWN STREAM

"And so my boy has taken up his abode with our friend, the poet," wrote the colonel to me. "Do you know, I fancy it will be good for both of them. I have long felt that our poet was getting too solitary and remote--too self-centred, shall I say?