108 EIGHT-LEGGED FRIENDS. 



pieces with his murderous spade, and saying spitefully as 

 he did so, at every particularly savage cut : ' I'll larn ye 

 to be a tvvoad, I will ; I'll larn ye to be a twoad ! ' 



Nevertheless, in spite of all this my vaunted philo- 

 sophy, I will frankly confess that more than once Eliza 

 and Lucy sorely tried my patience, and that I was often 

 a good deal better than half-minded in my soul to rush 

 out in a feverish fit of moral indignation and put an end 

 to their ghastly career of crime without waiting to hear 

 what they had to say in their own favour, showing cause 

 why sentence of death should not be executed upon 

 them. And I would have done it, I believe, had it not 

 been for that peculiar arrangement of the drawing-room 

 windows, which made it impossible to get at the culprits 

 direct, without going out into the garden and round the 

 house; which, of course, is a severe strain in wet or 

 windy weather to put upon anybody's moral enthusiasm. 

 In the end, therefore, I always gave the evil-doers the 

 benefit of the doubt ; and I only mention my ethical 

 scruples in the matter here lest scoffers should say, when 

 they come to read what manner of things Lucy and 

 Eliza did : ' Oh yes, that's just like those scientific 

 folks ; they're always so cold-blooded. He could stand 

 by and see these poor helpless flies tortured slowly to 

 death, without a chance for their lives, and never put out 

 a helping hand to save them ! ' Well, I would only ask you 

 one question, my sapient friend, who talk like that : Has 

 it ever occurred to you that, if you kill one spider, you 

 merely make room in the overflowing economy of nature 

 for another to pick up a dishonest livelihood ? Have you 

 ever reflected that the prime blame of spiderhood rests 



