It evinced altogether more strength and determination than one could have supposed such a boy to have been endowed with.

When I taxed him with it he stoutly denied it, asserting that whilst he was asleep sorcerers from the north, who had a spite against him, had entered the cell through some airholes in the wall and had done this; and in spite of all our cross-questioning and charging him with falsehood he still persisted in the same tale, and really appeared to think that he could persuade us of the truth of the assertion.

I told him that it was his duty to have taken care that these sorcerers had not injured the door, and that in future if he did not give the alarm when they came he should be well whipped for neglect, and that in the meantime I had a great mind to have him whipped for telling a story; I however satisfied myself by giving him a severe lecture upon the crime of lying.
He defended himself upon this head by ingenious arguments, altogether overlooking the abstract question of whether lying was a virtue or a vice, and defending himself solely upon the plea of its general usefulness and prevalence in the world.

I got rather worsted in the argument, and therefore, confining myself to admonitions and a few common-place maxims, I departed.
PEERAT'S WIVES SURRENDERED.

THEIR PUNISHMENT.
In the course of the forenoon Peerat presented himself at my window.