Chin on palms, he looked idly at the moon, and the moon inscrutably returned his stare. Plausible, bright, bland, it gave no sign that it was at its awful work. For the bride of night is like a card-dealer whose fingers move so swiftly through the pack the trickery goes unseen. This moon upon which he was placidly gazing, because he had nothing else to do, betokened nought to Hedrick: to him it was the moon of any other night, the old moon; certainly no moon of his delight. Withal, it may never be gazed upon so fixedly and so protractedly--no matter how languidly--with entire impunity. That light breeds a bug in the brain. Who can deny how the moon wrought this thing under the hair of unconscious Hedrick, or doubt its responsibility for the thing that happened? "_Little boy_!" It was a very soft, small voice, silky and queer; and at first Hedrick had little suspicion that it could be addressing him: the most rigid self-analysis could have revealed to him no possibility of his fitting so ignominious a description. "Oh, little boy!" He looked over his shoulder and saw, standing in the alley behind him, a girl of about his own age. She was daintily dressed and had beautiful hair which was all shining in pale gold. "Little boy!" She was smiling up at him, and once more she used that wantonly inaccurate vocative: "Little boy!" Hedrick grunted unencouragingly. "Who you callin' `little boy'?" For reply she began to climb the fence. It was high, but the young lady was astonishingly agile, and not even to be deterred by several faint wails from tearing and ripping fabrics--casualties which appeared to be entirely beneath her notice. Arriving at the top rather dishevelled, and with irregular pennons here and there flung to the breeze from her attire, she seated herself cosily beside the dumbfounded Hedrick. She turned her face to him and smiled--and there was something about her smile which Hedrick did not like. It discomforted him; nothing more. In sunlight he would have had the better chance to comprehend; but, unhappily, this was moonshine. "Kiss me, little boy!" she said. "I won't!" exclaimed the shocked and indignant Hedrick, edging uneasily away from her. "Let's play," she said cheerfully. "Play what?" "I like chickens. Did you know I like chickens?" The rather singular lack of connection in her remarks struck him as a misplaced effort at humour. "You're having lots of fun with me, aren't you?" he growled. She instantly moved close to him and lifted her face to his. "Kiss me, darling little boy!" she said. There was something more than uncommonly queer about this stranger, an unearthliness of which he was confusedly perceptive, but she was not without a curious kind of prettiness, and her pale gold hair was beautiful. The doomed lad saw the moon shining through it. "Kiss me, darling little boy!" she repeated. His head whirled; for the moment she seemed divine.