TOO LATE

The damage was done. I pulled my coat tighter around me, and skipped away half-humming, half-whistling and pretending I'd played no part in the events just unfolded.  I stopped briefly as if to examine a tree stump, and that was my mistake.  Twenty minutes later I was helping police with their enquiries, faced with the choice of three years in the slammer or the impossible task of spinning a huge room of straw into gold for an ungrateful king.