One morning, about a week after the affair at the allotments, when Ann sallied forth as usual for water, she paused incidentally to look over her neighbour’s gate. The hen-coop was still in view, the hen cackling, and the ducklings waddling up and down the path. But how few of them there were! Only three! What could have become of the others? Possibly they were squatting at the back of the coop. She was craning her head round in order to ascertain if this were the case, when a window in Mrs. Clarke’s house was thrown open, and that lady’s voice was heard in angry tones:-- “I’ve catched you at it, have I? I’ve catched you at it! Well, you did ought to be ashamed of yourself, Ann Kerley. To try an’ do me a mischief--me, as has been sich a good neighbour to ’ee.” “Why, what’s the matter?” returned Ann, backing away from the gate, and raising dim, distracted eyes. “I’ve catched you in the very act,” continued Mrs. Clarke vehemently. “Says I to myself when the ducklin’s kep’ a-droppin’ off like that, ‘I wonder if it can be Ann?’ says I, an’ then I thinks, ‘No, it never can be Ann; her an’ me was always friends,’ I says. Ah, you ungrateful, spiteful creetur’!” An arm, clad in checked flannelette, was here thrust forth, and the fist appertaining thereto emphatically shaken. “I’m sure,” protested the unfortunate Ann, staggering back against her own little gate, “I don’t know whatever you can mean by such talk, Mrs. Clarke; I never touched your ducks. I be a honest ’ooman, an’ I wouldn’t take nothin’ what didn’t belong to I.” “I don’t say you stole ’em,” retorted Mrs. Clarke, “but I say you overlooked ’em, an’ that’s worse; a body ’ud know what to be at if ’twas only a thief as was makin’ away wi’ ’em, but when ’tis a witch--Lard, whatever is to be done? I couldn’t ha’ thought ye’d ha’ found it in your heart to go striking down they poor little innercent things. What harm did they do ye? Sich beauties as they was. But there, ye must go gettin’ up in the very dummet that ye mid overlook the poor little creetur’s, so that, one after another, they do just croopy down an’ die.” “Mrs. Clarke,” said Anne, solemnly and desperately, “I can’t tell how sich a thing did come about--I can’t indeed. ’Tis no fault o’ mine, I do assure ye. I wouldn’t ha’ had they poor little duck die for anything. I never wished ’em ill. I was admirin’ of ’em. I never had no other thought.” “Well, see here,” returned Mrs. Clarke, somewhat mollified. “Don’t ye look at ’em at all, that’s a good ’ooman. Maybe ’tis no fault o’ yourn, but ’tis very strange, Mrs. Kerley, what do seem to have come to you to-year. You do seem to bring bad luck, though you midn’t do it a-purpose.” “I’m sure I don’t,” protested Ann, “an’ I can’t believe, Mrs. Clarke, as a body can do bad wi’out knowin’ it.”