But it is to be regretted that Mabel’s noble ambitions were never gratified. Of course, faults existed on both sides. She was exacting and impatient; the Jacky-Toad was obstinate. It is better to rule by love than fear if you are dealing with a Devon Jacky-Toad, but Mabel was too severe. She expected too much; she said hard things, none the pleasanter for being true; and the Jacky-Toad finally grew sullen, and refused to employ even that morsel of brain power which it had pleased Providence to bestow upon him. His health was partly to blame for this. Change of scene, night air, and the humid atmosphere of a quag are essential to the well-being of all Jacky-Toads; and this one languished under imprisonment, lost his temper all too often, and frequently swore in broad Devonshire, merely from the wicked desire to make Mabel angry. Once, when he said pointedly that she evidently had not the gift of teaching, she slapped him and dropped him head-first into his marmalade-jar. Then he turned round, said a thing not to be repeated here, and tried to bite her. Relations were strained henceforward, but though Mabel shed bitter tears over her failure to reach that nobler part of his nature which must not be denied even to a Jacky-Toad, she still had hope, and determined with praiseworthy pluck to conquer in the end. Chance, however, defeated her resolves, and it happened that the Jacky-Toad’s longed-for opportunity to escape came at last. Needless to say he seized it. During a spring cleaning, a maid found the marmalade-jar while Mabel was at school, and, believing it empty, she threw it into the dustbin. From thence it was removed to a rubbish-heap, and a boy, seeing it lying there, immediately broke it with his catapult. Thus the prisoner found himself a free Jacky-Toad, and being happily gifted with that marvellous “homing” instinct so much admired in the carrier pigeon and humble-bee, he immediately rose to a considerable height in the air, dodged the smoke from a factory chimney, and proceeded as the crow flies, or is given credit for flying, to the West of England. * * * * * Under a spring moon the nocturnal moor was all alive and awake. The pixies were busy measuring new fairy rings for the coming season; the elves--those “whose little eyes glow, like sparks of fire”--were entertaining the brownies; the Jacky-Toads, having danced the “Wildfire Gallop,” sat and rested, and talked politics. Then it happened that their missing colleague formed matter for discussion, and an aged Jacky-Toad, by tacit understanding father of the company, gave it as his opinion that the wanderer had lost himself in fresh running water, which is, of course, death to _Ignes Fatui_ all the world over. “He was a born fule, if you remember,” he concluded.