Love stretched her fair hand, and Kitty could not tell if the fog grew transparent, allowing her to see what it had hitherto hidden, or if a picture painted itself thereupon.

Her eyes, fixed upon the dim mist, seemed to open wider and wider.

She saw a dreadful thing. An immense cobweb, and in it a child was caught. A big black spider was weaving its threads around the captive. Hand and foot the little one was bound. Kitty saw the child’s figure distinctly; its pretty hair shone through the web. How cunningly the spider had entangled it; weaving and knotting its gluey thread about the round throat, the bright eyes, across the rosy lips, the tiny ears, hands, and feet. The child did not stir; it remained quiet in its gray, filmy prison. 127But there were other children in the fog, some entangled in webs almost as large and strong, while others had but a silver thread or two gleaming about their necks and brows. These played merrily about, not seeing the black wary spider watching above their head, and every now and then shooting out, spinning and knotting a thread about them.

“What is that dreadful cobweb?” asked Kitty in a whisper, drawing nearer to Love.

“Speak to the children; they will tell you,” replied her guide.

But Kitty only crept closer to her, and drew 128the fair robes around her, peeping fearfully out from her hiding-place.

“I will explain,” said Love. “These are the children who tell falsehoods. Every falsehood a child tells its spirit gets more and more entangled in a web. The spider shoots a thread around it. One falsehood leads to another, so the web grows and grows, and the little captive spirit finds it harder to escape from its wretchedness and misery.”

“Can they never break away?” asked Kitty, drawing a breath of relief as the fog-picture slowly faded and the mist closed over it like a curtain.

Love’s face was sad and its meaning difficult to guess. Before she could answer there came a sound of little feet through the fog, a faint tramp, tramp. Not a merry run or dance; but as if restless, invisible little feet were going round and round, backward and forward. Then Kitty saw the image of something forming itself on the fog. Round and round, zigzag, to the right, to the left, rose a structure with walls made of thorns.

129“What is that?” she whispered.

“Do you know what a labyrinth is, or a maze?” asked Love.

“It is a place very difficult to get out of,” answered Kitty; and she grew quite giddy looking at this rolling, crooked, curving, spinning-about, straightening place.

Presently she saw that it was crowded with children. It was the tramp of their little feet she had heard, for they were running, running.

“Why, that is not punishment, that is play,” said Kitty, astonished.

“Speak to them,” answered Love.

Some of the children were running with quite a spirited air, as if they were enjoying the race; their heads were uplifted, their chins poked out; others plodded on wearily with a dogged expression, while some looked angry and miserable; and others again seemed dazed and wandered foolishly up and down, going backward and forward about the same spot. Tramp, tramp, went those impetuous, tired, foolish feet. Kitty advanced a step or two, 130then some of the children trooped up toward the spot nearest to her. “We want to get out! We want to get out!” they said in fretful voices that sounded a long way off yet were quite distinct. “We want to get out! We want to get back to Obedience Path,” they repeated, looking anxiously at Kitty, as if they thought she might show them the way out of this labyrinth.

Kitty looked eagerly about to see if she could help them to find the right path; but every pathway was so turning and twisting, so crooked and intricate, that it made her giddy to try 131and follow its curves and caprices. She shook her head sadly, and the children then left her, and tramp, tramp went those restless little feet.

One child alone remained behind, going backward and forward like a little bird flitting about the door of its cage.

“I want to get out! I want to get out!” he said plaintively.

“What is this place?” asked Kitty.

“It is Disobedience Maze,” said the child in a thin, clear voice. “We are the disobedient children, and because we would follow our own way instead of the one that we were told to go we have lost the Path of Obedience. I would go to the right when I was told to go to the left. I would go back when I was told to go on. I would do what I was told not to do, and one day I found I had got into this miserable place, which is so full of dreadful troubles, and thorns, and twistings. I am so tired! I am so tired! I want to find my way to Obedience Path.”

Even as he spoke the vision began to fade 132and disappear, and the sound of the little feet grew fainter and fainter. Only the childish voices asking to “get back into Obedience Path” seemed still to float out from the fog curtain that had stolen over the scene.

Kitty felt very sorry for those poor children tramping in Disobedience Maze, and restlessly seeking the way out.

“Won’t they ever get out?” she asked with tears in her eyes.

“Every child has a chance,” answered Love. “But, hush!—wait—you will know by and by.”

Kitty saw that another vision was forming on the fog. She saw a cold, gray, flat plain strewn with what looked like lumps of ice very queerly shaped. Over the plain moaned a shivering sound like that of the wind. “I—I—I!” It turned to a shrill whistle. “Me—e—e—me—me!”

As the vision grew clearer Kitty perceived that what looked like lumps of ice were really frozen children. Some of them were just turning into ice. They were motionless, as if frozen 133to the ground; but the eyes of all were living, peering, hungry eyes, turning here and there with alert watchfulness. Their hands were also alive; they were black and blue with cold, but stretched out, opening and shutting, clutching at everything they could lay hold of, such as the bits of sticks or rags that strewed the ground.

There was something terrible and grotesque in the sight of those ice-children, motionless but for their keen eyes watching, and hands grabbing, clutching. Kitty now perceived that their lips moved also, and that they and not the wind uttered that shivering “I—I—I! Me—me—me!”

“Who are they?” she whispered.

Once more Love motioned to her to speak to them; but Kitty drew back. She was as much afraid of talking to them as she had been to the child in the cobweb. It was like talking to dead children. As she shrank away the shrill, airy voices began a song her nurse used to sing as a reproach to her when she was selfish:
134“I said to myself as I walked by myself,
And myself said again to me:
‘Take heed of thyself, look after thyself,
For nobody cares for thee.’”

They sang it together, but all in a different key and in a different measure, so that the effect produced was a shrill discord, as if rasping rattles, and wheezy whistles, and cracked stringed instruments were playing in concert, but each on its own account.

“Well, I must say,” cried Kitty, forgetting 135her fright, “if I sang those ugly words, at any rate I would sing them in time and all together.”

“We never do anything together,” said the child nearest to her, who happened not to be quite turned into an icicle. “We always cry when others laugh, and laugh when others cry. We always take all we can and do all we can to prevent others from getting anything. That is the way to turn to ice. Every time you do this your heart gets a little colder, a little harder, a little lonelier. It’s quite easy to turn to ice; you have only to think always of yourself.”

“But I don’t want to turn to ice on any account. I don’t want to be cold and hard and lonely. It is the very last thing I want. Nobody would love me,” cried Kitty indignantly.

“But I love myself,” said the ice-child, with a shiver. “I wish I could like what I grab,” it went on, turning beady eyes on the rags and sticks, gathered in a heap by its side; “but I cannot; I only don’t want any one else to have 136them. Oh, I wish I could thaw!” it said quite suddenly and unexpectedly.

“We wish we could thaw! We wish we could thaw!” sighed all the children together; and the vision faded, slowly faded away.

“Won’t they ever grow warm again?” asked Kitty, blinking away some tears.

Love looked almost as sad as when Kitty had questioned her about the cobweb, and her face was as difficult to read.

Now there came from behind the fog curtain a sharp sound of smackings.

“Whippings!” said Kitty with a gleam of fun in her eyes that dried up the lingering tears.

But it was not whippings that the fog vision showed. Again she saw a crowd of children, and each child was boxing its own ears, pulling its own hair, pinching, biting, scratching its own hands or face; making grimaces the trace of which remained. Kitty recognized some of the children she had seen in Daddy Coax’s schoolroom. There was the child who had slapped his kind old face: she was slapping 137her own with vigor. Slap, slap on each cheek sounded the smack of the little furious hands. There was the boy who had tried to kick Daddy Coax’s shins, kicking away—kick, kick—at his own.

“That is a splendid punishment,” said Kitty, nodding approvingly and smiling broadly.

It was an extraordinary sight to behold, clinched small fists raised as if to hurt some one 138else suddenly turning round and administering a sound cuff, bang, bang on their owner’s ears; to behold those spread-out tiny fingers pulling away viciously at their owner’s hair. It was a sight ludicrous and yet sad. Such swollen noses, blackened eyes; such battered, bruised, wounded children, inflicting great misery upon themselves, making themselves so ugly by grimaces that left their mark behind.

“Who are you?” cried Kitty, much excited.

“We are the passionate, willful, ungrateful children,” said a boy whom Kitty recognized to be the one who had broken Daddy Coax’s flute. He looked dismally at her and then gave himself two big thumps, one on his nose and one on his ear. “Never you hurt others, especially those who are kind to you. It’s yourself you hurt all the while,” he went on. “It’s dreadful pain when you come to feel it! dreadful! and you can’t leave off, you must keep on hurting yourself, not till you get the kiss of forgiveness. I should like to see dear old Daddy Coax again. I should like to give him a kiss and to tell him I am sorry.”

139“We are sorry,” cried all the children, and their cry still sounded as the picture faded away.

“Who gives the kiss of forgiveness? Will they ever get the kiss?” asked Kitty anxiously, for she had changed her mind about the punishment.

“There is one day in the year when every child can get it,” said the pale lady.

Before Kitty could ask another question she saw that another picture was appearing in the fog. The ground was strewn with pretty feathers of birds, with smashed speckled eggs, with cozy nests all spoiled. Hosts of lovely butterflies flapped about with crushed wings that thoughtless little hands had broken. Dream pussies, looking starved and in pain, haunted the place, curving their backs as if coming to be stroked and to rub themselves against friendly legs. Faithful-eyed dogs limped about. The mist seemed full of pipings of sorrowing birds, of reproachful mews, of pitiful whines, and all the children seemed grieved. Kitty recognized some of those who 140had dragged her along and would have robbed the bird’s nest.

“I know those are the cruel children. I hope they will be well punished,” said Kitty.

“They are punished. Look at their tears,” said the pale lady. “They did not know the pain they gave, because they did not think. Now they know when they have killed one of God’s dear innocent creatures they cannot mend it again, as a toy can be mended. They cannot mend the butterflies’ wings. They cannot give back the poor little yellow-beaked young to the grieving parent birds.”

Kitty saw that some of the children were shutting their ears not to hear the pipings and other cries of pain; others closing their eyes not to see the dead birds, the wounded cats and dogs. She presently perceived that a little girl was speaking to her. She recognized the child who could not speak distinctly, who had killed the butterfly.

“I am always seeing it. It flaps about me,” moaned the baby voice. “It keeps saying to me here, ‘I was so merry that day. The sun 141was shining and I was going to see how my friends the daisies were getting on, and if the buttercups were golden as yesterday. I was playing, as you love to play, and just as I was merriest, with the sunshine on m............