“Your words are true, my child,” he replied, “in one sense, but they only tend to confirm the wisdom of my sentence. A donkey in thought and action is not always a donkey in shape. Were it otherwise, the world would be much more largely populated by those worthy and industrious animals. It is no terrible fate to which I condemn the aged Stokes. She will forthwith enter upon an existence in which she may render no inconsiderable service to mortals, who, whilst they despise, will not scruple to use her; and should she, as is highly probable, at any period of time, become the property of an itinerant vendor of brooms, she will have every chance of acquiring a further knowledge of the purposes to which a broomstick may be properly applied.” He spoke, and as he concluded, a change at once came over the figure and appearance of Dame Stokes. Great ears sprung up on each side of her head, which became at once altered and elongated into that of a donkey; her body followed the example; a huge tail appeared in the usual place allotted to such appendages, and in another moment she stood, a veritable ass, before the assembled throng. Then the young man turned to the terrified Mother Wandle, and sternly addressed her in her turn. “You,” he said, “though not so bad as the third, are worse than the first of your party. Not content with your own shape (which I will, however, own was not prepossessing), you have gone about the country in disguise, and have, moreover, disgraced the family of bats (many of {220}whom are honest and owl-fearing creatures) by-assuming the shape of one of them, and in this form perpetrating your wicked deeds. Now one of two things must be true. Either you were _not_ by rights a bat, and had therefore no right to the shape of one, or, being a bat, you had no business to disgrace the family. In either case you are equally guilty, and your punishment must be proportionately severe. Since you have evinced, by the most practical means within your power, the undoubted preference which you cherish for the form of a bat, a bat you shall remain for ever, and, once for all, quit that human shape which you have so foolishly despised. Henceforth be your life that of the animal whom you have loved to imitate in your midnight flittings. Behind shutters, under eaves, beneath old boards and barn-sides be hidden, wretch, from the face of the sun, and only come forth when the shades of evening steal over the face of the earth. Shun the gaze of mankind, whom you have only lived to annoy, and rank for the rest of your existence amongst the most lowly and feeble of animals.” He spoke, and, as in the case of Dame Stokes, the form and figure of Mother Wandle changed even as he ceased speaking, and a huge and unsightly bat occupied the place of the old woman, whilst a murmur of applause and approval was uttered by all who witnessed the transformation.