This afternoon I saw the yellow stand which the Wooden Captain used to occupy. What memories it recalled, ah me! Can he have disgraced himself and been "broke"? And am _I_ responsible? _Christmas Eve._--Am sitting in my corner, my mouse curled comfortably at my feet, when the Walking Postman comes up with a letter--for _me_! It is from the Wicked Doll! He is very ill--_dying_, he thinks--and wishes to see me. How well I remember that _other_ message which Joseph--but Joseph is taken, and the Ball still bounds! Well, I will go. It will be something to tell my Diary. * * * * * _Christmas Day._--Something _indeed_! How shall I begin my wondrous _incredible_ tale? I reached the Doll's House, which looked gloomier and more deserted than ever, with the sullen glow of the dying fire reflected redly in its windows. The green door stood open--I went in. "Ha, ha! _trapped_!" cried a sneering voice behind me. It was the Wicked Doll! His letter was a _ruse_--he was as well as I was--and I--I was shut up there in that lonely house, entirely at his mercy!... It was a frightful position for any doll to be placed in; and yet, looking back on it now, I don't think I minded it so _very_ much. "Listen!" he said, in response to my agonized entreaties. "Long, long ago, when I was young and innocent, a beautiful but heartless being bewitched me, kid and bran! I told my love--she mocked at me. Since then I have sworn, though she has escaped me, to avenge myself by sacrificing the life of the first doll I could entice into my power. _You_ are that doll. You must die!"... "I am quite prepared," I told him--"do your worst!" which seemed to confuse him very much. "I will," he said, "presently--presently; there is no hurry. You see," he explained, in a tone almost of apology, "in endeavouring to save her life (it was my last good action) I got my head smashed, and received the substitute I now wear, which, as you will observe, is that of an unmitigated villain. And it's no use having a head like that if you don't live _up_ to it--_is_ it, now? So--as I think I observed before--prepare for the worst!" "Don't talk about it any more--_do_ it!" I said, and I breathed Joseph's name softly. But the Wicked Doll did nothing at all. I began to feel safer--it was so obvious that he hadn't the faintest notion _what_ to do. "She treated me abominably," he said feebly; "_any_ doll would have been annoyed at the heartless way in which Gloriana----" I could contain my feelings no longer.