The Patrician took a sip of his beer. __ have told this to few people, gentlemen, and I suspect I never will again, but one day when I was a young boy on holiday in Uberwald I was walking along the bank of a stream when I saw a mother otter with her cubs. A very endearing sight, I__ sure you will agree, and even as I watched, the mother otter dived into the water and came up with a plump salmon, which she subdued and dragged on to a half-submerged log. As she ate it, while of course it was still alive, the body split and I remember to this day the sweet pinkness of its roes as they spilled out, much to the delight of the baby otters, who scrambled over themselves to feed on the delicacy. One of nature__ wonders, gentlemen: mother and children dining on mother and children. And that__ when I first learned about evil. It is built into the nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior.

Fear is the original sin,_ suddenly said a still, small voice away back__ack__ack of Valancy__ consciousness. __lmost all the evil in the world has its origin in the fact that some one is afraid of something.__alancy stood up. She was still in the clutches of fear, but her soul was her own again. She would not be false to that inner voice.

It's the fools that make all the trouble in the world, not the wicked.

I doubt you would recognize an adventure of any sort if it came right up and bit you on the a---Mother!I was going to say arm.

Oh, Marilla, I thought I was happy before. Now I know that I just dreamed a pleasant dream of happiness. This is the reality.

Look, do you see that poem?' she said suddenly, pointing.