The Penance by Saki, read by Mike Bennett.

Octavian Ruttle was one of those lively, cheerful individuals on whom amiability had set its unmistakable stamp, and like most of his kind his soul's peace depended in large measure

on the unstinted approval of his fellows. In hunting to death a small tabby cat he had done a thing of which he

scarcely approved himself and he was glad when the gardener had hidden the body in its hastily dug grave under a lone oak tree in the meadow,

the same tree that the hunted quarry had climbed as a last effort towards safety.

It had been a distasteful and seemingly ruthless deed, but circumstances had demanded the doing of it. Octavian kept chickens. At least he kept some

of them. Others vanished from his keeping, leaving only a few blood-stained feathers to mark the manner of their going.

The Tabby cat, from the large grey house that stood with its back to the meadow had been detected in many furtive

visits to the hencoops and after due negotiation with those in authority at the grey House, a sentence of death had been agreed on.

The children will mind, but they need not know, had been the last word on the matter. The children in question were a standing puzzle to

Octavian. In the course of a few months he considered that he should have known their names, ages, the dates of their

birthdays, and have been introduced to their favourite toys.

They remained, however, as non-committal as the long, blank wall that shut them off from the meadow,

a wall over which their three heads sometimes appeared at odd moments.

They had parents in India, that March Octavian had learned in the neighborhood, the children,

beyond grouping themselves garment-wise into sexes, girl and two boys, carried

their life story no further on his behoof. And now it seemed he was engaged in something which touched

them closely, but must be hidden from their knowledge. The poor helpless chickens had gone one by one to their doom, so it was

meat that their destroyer should come to a violent end.

Yet Octavian felt some qualms when his share of the violence was ended.

The little cat, headed off from its wanted tracks of safety, had raced unfriended from shelter to shelter,

and its end had been rather piteous.

...