hedge, and one discovers that the cart is just not standing still. For in the ingenious art of sugaring Jack is second to none. I assure myself that the club is in the cart, but I do not so much as finger it, for it is a principle with me never to belabour this poor dumb brute until I am well away from the chance of observation. On the downs, however, it is different. There the eyes of my wife and my Maker alone see what I do to this ass, and I have no fear. The one is in the same cart as I. The Other is able to judge between me and this ass, and I have absolute confidence of acquittal. But the hasty misconception of the ignorant I fear. My name would look well in a brutality case. In human justice I place no trust, but in that of Divinity I do absolutely confide.
There is a spot somewhere on the ass which by repeated blows I have rendered less callous than other parts of him. Sometimes I find it, and the ass seems to start in his sleep. Thus we gain a yard.
We have gravely discussed the use upon the ass of devices whose fiendish ingenuity and cruelty make me blush for the brains which could imagine them. I cannot write them down.
A hair-pin—I snatched it out—has almost been employed. But the hand of Mercy snatched
