176 GLOOSCAP AND OTHER STORIES

ing up a crooked stick he bent it and crumpled it from end to end.

01" course the Crane 'understood all this ill- temper and insincerity, but he did not say a word. He meekly stretched his neck until his head touched the opposite bank, and the Badger sprang upon this bridge the Crane had made. But when he was out in the stream, where it was deepest and most dangerous, the Crane shook himself, and in a moment the Badger was whirling round and round in the water like a chip of wood. In a moment more he was dashed against a rock, and then he was thrown high and dry upon the shore, quite dead except for his magical backbone, which only waited to be spoken to, when it would have the power to call its body to life again.