Then Mr. Fox rose in his seat stonily and glared about him as if to escape, and his eye-teeth showed like a fox beset by the dogs, and he grew pale.

And he said, trying to smile, though his whispering voice could scarcely be heard: 

“But it is not so, dear heart, and it was not so, and God forbid it should be so!”

Then Lady Mary rose in her seat also, and the smile left her face, and her voice rang as she cried: 

  “But it is so, and it was so;
   Here’s hand and ring I have to show.”

[Illustration:  Many’s the beating he had from the broomstick or the ladle]

And with that she pulled out the poor dead hand with the glittering ring from her bosom and pointed it straight at Mr. Fox.

At this all the company rose, and drawing their swords cut Mr. Fox to pieces.

And served him very well right.

DICK WHITTINGTON AND HIS CAT

More than five hundred years ago there was a little boy named Dick Whittington, and this is true.  His father and mother died when he was too young to work, and so poor little Dick was very badly off.  He was quite glad to get the parings of the potatoes to eat and a dry crust of bread now and then, and more than that he did not often get, for the village where he lived was a very poor one and the neighbours were not able to spare him much.

Now the country folk in those days thought that the people of London were all fine ladies and gentlemen, and that there was singing and dancing all the day long, and so rich were they there that even the streets, they said, were paved with gold.  Dick used to sit by and listen while all these strange tales of the wealth of London were told, and it made him long to go and live there and have plenty to eat and fine clothes to wear, instead of the rags and hard fare that fell to his lot in the country.

So one day when a great waggon with eight horses stopped on its way through the village, Dick made friends with the waggoner and begged to be taken with him to London.  The man felt sorry for poor little Dick when he heard that he had no father or mother to take care of him, and saw how ragged and how badly in need of help he was.  So he agreed to take him, and off they set.

How far it was and how many days they took over the journey I do not know, but in due time Dick found himself in the wonderful city which he had heard so much of and pictured to himself so grandly.  But oh! how disappointed he was when he got there.  How dirty it was!  And the people, how unlike the gay company, with music and singing, that he had dreamt of!  He wandered up and down the streets, one after another, until he was tired out, but not one did he find that was paved with gold.  Dirt in plenty he could see, but none of the gold that he thought to have put in his pockets as fast as he chose to pick it up.

[Illustration:  Dick finds that the streets of London are not paved with gold]