Stop on your morning round, and I'll give account of my trading." The overseer gone, the windows barred, and the heavy door shut and locked behind him, MacLean paused upon the doorstep to look down upon his appointed companion.

The trader, half sitting, half reclining upon a log, was striking at something with the point of his hunting-knife, lightly, delicately, and often.

The something was a lizard, about which, as it lay in the sunshine upon the log, he had wrought a pen of leafy twigs.

The creature, darting for liberty this way and that, was met at every turn by the steel, and at every turn suffered a new wound.

MacLean looked; then bent over and with a heavy stick struck the thing out of its pain.
"There's a time to work and a time to play, Hugon," he said coolly.
"Playtime's over now.