from a pea-shooter with the gardener’s bald head.  Before there had been a lifetime of experiment before him, and he had put off this one idly in favour of something more pressing.  Now there was only one day.  He took up his pea-shooter and aimed carefully.  The pea did not embed itself deeply into the gardener’s skull as William had sometimes thought it would.  It bounced back.  It bounced back quite hard.  The gardener also bounced back with a yell of anger, shaking his fist at William’s window.  But William had discreetly retired.  He hid the pea-shooter, assumed his famous expression of innocence, and felt distinctly cheered.  The question as to what exactly would happen when the pea met the baldness was now for ever solved.  The gardener retired grumbling to the potting shed, so, for the present, all was well.  Later in the day the gardener might lay his formal complaint before authority, but later in the day was later in the day.  It did not trouble William.  He dressed briskly and went down to breakfast with a frown of concentration upon his face.  It was the last day of his old life.

[Illustration:  THE PEA DID NOT EMBED ITSELF INTO THE GARDENER’S SKULL AS WILLIAM HAD SOMETIMES THOUGHT IT WOULD.  IT BOUNCED BACK.  THE GARDENER ALSO BOUNCED BACK.]

No one else was in the dining-room.  It was the work of a few minutes to remove the bacon from beneath the big pewter cover and substitute the kitten, to put a tablespoonful of salt into the coffee, and to put a two-days’-old paper in place of that morning’s.  They were all things that he had at one time or another vaguely thought of doing, but for which he had never yet seemed to have time or opportunity.  Warming to his subject he removed the egg from under the egg cosy on his sister’s plate and placed in its stead a worm which had just appeared in the window-box in readiness for the early bird.

He surveyed the scene with a deep sigh of satisfaction.  The only drawback was that he felt that he could not safely stay to watch results.  William possessed a true strategic instinct for the right moment for a retreat.  Hearing, therefore, a heavy step on the stairs, he seized several pieces of toast and fled.  As he fled he heard through the open window violent sounds proceeding from the enraged kitten beneath the cover, and then the still more violent sounds proceeding from the unknown person who removed the cover.  The kitten, a mass of fury and lust for revenge, came flying through the window.  William hid behind a laurel bush till it had passed, then set off down the road.

School, of course, was impossible.  The precious hours of such a day as this could not be wasted in school.  He went down the road full of his noble purpose.  The wickedness of a lifetime was somehow or other to be crowded into this day.  To-morrow it would all be impossible.  To-morrow began the blameless life.  It must all be worked off to-day.  He skirted the school by a field path in case any of those narrow souls paid to employ so aimlessly the precious hours of his youth might be there.  They would certainly be tactless enough to question him as he passed the door.  Then he joined the main road.