"By a snake?" came in excited chorus.
"It fascinated them with its deadly, glittering eyes, one after the
other, and struck them down while they stood helpless. A bedridden
neighbour, who wasn't able to call for assistance, witnessed it all from
her bedroom window."
"Well, I never!" broke in the chorus, with variations.
"The interesting part of it is about the seventh pullet, the one that
didn't get killed," resumed Blenkinthrope, slowly lighting a cigarette.
His diffidence had left him, and he was beginning to realise how safe and
easy depravity can seem once one has the courage to begin. "The six dead
birds were Minorcas; the seventh was a Houdan with a mop of feathers all
over its eyes. It could hardly see the snake at all, so of course it
wasn't mesmerised like the others. It just could see something wriggling
on the ground, and went for it and pecked it to death."
"Well, I'm blessed!" exclaimed the chorus.
In the course of the next few days Blenkinthrope discovered how little
the loss of one's self-respect affects one when one has gained the esteem
of the world. His story found its way into one of the poultry papers,
and was copied thence into a daily news-sheet as a matter of general
interest. A lady wrote from the North of Scotland recounting a similar
episode which she had witnessed as occurring between a stoat and a blind
grouse. Somehow a lie seems so much less reprehensible when one can call
it a lee.
For awhile the adapter of the Seventh Pullet story enjoyed to the full
his altered standing as a person of consequence, one who had had some
share in the strange events of his times.
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