The  kiddies  were queueing up  with  their  parents  and watching  the display owlishly.

     And the money was coming in. Oh, how the money was coming in.

     So  that  the staff would  not be  Tempted, Mr Crumley  had  set  up an arrangement  of  overhead  wires  across  the ceilings of the  store. In the middle of each floor  was a cashier in a little cage. Staff took money  from customers, put it in a little clockwork cable car, sent it whizzing overhead to the cashier,  who'd make change and  start  it rattling back  again. Thus there  was  no possibility  of Temptation,  and  the  little  trolleys  were shooting back and forth like fireworks.

     Mr Crumley loved Hogswatch. It was for. the Kiddies, after all.

     He tucked his fingers in the pockets of his waistcoat and beamed.

     'Everything going well, Miss Harding?'

     'Yes, Mr Crumley,' said the cashier, meekly.

     'Jolly good.' He looked at the pile of coins.

     A bright little  zig-zag  crackled off them and earthed  itself on  the metal grille.

     Mr Crumley blinked. In front of him sparks  flashed  off the steel rims of Miss Harding's spectacles.

     The  Grotto display changed. For just a fraction of a second Mr Crumley had the sensation of speed, as though what appeared had screeched to a halt. Which was ridiculous.

     The four pink papier-mache pigs exploded. A cardboard snout bounced off Mr Crumley's head.

     There, sweating and grunting  in the place where the little piggies had been, were ...  well, he  assumed  they were pigs, because hippopotamuses didn't have pointy ears  and rings  through their noses.  But  the creatures were huge and grey and bristly and a cloud of acrid mist hung over each one.

     And they didn't look sweet. There  was nothing charming about them. One turned to look at  him with small, red eyes, and didn't go 'oink', which was the  sound  that  Mr Crumley,  born  and  raised  in  the  city, had  always associated with pigs.

     It went 'Ghnaaarrrwnnkh?'

     The sleigh had changed, too.  He'd been very pleased  with that sleigh. It had delicate  silver  curly  bits on it.  He'd personally supervised  the gluing on  of  every  twinkling star. But the splendour of it  was  lying in glittering shards around a sledge that looked as though it had been built of crudely  sawn tree trunks  laid on two  massive  wooden  runners.  It looked ancient and there were  faces carved on the wood, nasty crude grinning faces that looked quite out of place.

     Parents were  yelling and trying to  pull their children away, but they weren't having  much  luck. The  children were gravitating  towards  it like flies to jam.

     Mr Crumley ran towards the terrible thing, waving his hands.

     'Stop that! Stop that!' he screamed. 'You'll frighten the Kiddies!'

     He heard a small boy behind him say, 'They 've got tusks! Cool!'

     His sister  said, 'Hey, look, that  one's  doing a wee!'  A  tremendous cloud of yellow steam arose. 'Look,  it's  going all the  way to the stairs! All those who can't swim hold onto the banisters!'

     'They eat you if you're bad, you know,' said a small girl with  obvious approval. 'All up. Even the bones. They crunch them.'

     Another,  older,  child  opined: 'Don't be childish. They're not  real. They've just got a wizard in to do the magic. Or it's all done by clockwork. Everyone knows they're not really r...'

     One  of the  boars  turned to  look  at  him. The  boy moved behind his mother.

     Mr Crumley, tears of anger streaming clown his face, fought through the milling  crowd  until  he reached  the  Hogfather's  Grotto.  He  grabbed  a frightened pixie.

     'It's the Campaign  for Equal Heights that've done  this, isn't it!' he shouted.  'They're  out  to ruin me!  And  they're  ruining it  for all  the Kiddies! Look at the lovely dolls!'

     The  pixie hesitated. Children were clustering around the pigs, despite the continued  efforts of their  mothers. The  small girl was  giving one of them an orange.

     But  the animated  display  of  Dolls of All  Nations was definitely in trouble. The musical box underneath was still playing 'Wouldn't  It Be  Nice If Everyone Was Nice' but the rods that animated the figures had got twisted out of shape, so that the Klatchian boy was rhythmically hitting  the Omnian girl  over the head with  his ceremonial  spear, while the girl  in  Agatean national  costume was  kicking a  small Llamedosian druid repeatedly in  the ear. A chorus of small children was cheering them on indiscriminately.

     'There's, er,  there's more  trouble in the Grotto,  Mr Crum' the pixie began.

     A  red and white figure pushed its  way through the crush and rammed  a false beard into Mr Crumley's hands.

     'That's it,'  said the old man in the  Hogfather costume. 'I don't mind the smell of  oranges  and the damp trousers but  I  ain't  putting  up with this.'

     He stamped off through the  queue. Mr  Crumley heard him add, 'And he's not even doin' it right!'

     Mr Crumley forced his way onward.

     Someone was sitting in the  big  chair. There  was a child on his knee. The figure was ... strange.

     It  was  definitely  in  something  like a  Hogfather  costume  but  Mr Crumley's eye kept slipping, it  wouldn't focus, it skittered away and tried to put the figure on the very edge of vision. It was like trying to  look at your own ear.

     'What's going on here? What's going on here?' Crumley demanded.

     A  hand took  his shoulder firmly.  He turned round and looked into the face  of a  Grotto Pixie. At least, it was wearing  the costume of  a Grotto Pixie, although somewhat askew, as if it had been put on in a hurry.

     'Who are you?'

     The pixie took the soggy cigarette end  out of its mouth  and leered at him.

     'Call me Uncle Heavy,' he said.

     'You're not a pixie!'

     'Nah, I'm a fairy cobbler, mister.'

     Behind Crumley, a voice said:

AND WHAT DO YOU WANT FOR HOGSWATCH, SMALL HUMAN?

     Mr Crumley turned in horror.

     In front of - well, he had to think of it as  the usurping Hogfather  - was  a  small child of  indeterminate sex  who seemed to be  mostly  woollen bobble hat.

     Mr Crumley knew how it was supposed to go. It was  supposed  to go like this: the child was always  struck dumb and  the attendant mother would lean forward and catch the Hogfather's eye and say very pointedly, in that  voice adults use when they're conspiring against children:

     'You want a Baby  Tinkler Doll, don't  you,  Doreen? And the  Just Like Mummy Cookery  Set you've got in the window. And the  Cut-Out Kitchen  Range Book. And what do you say?'

     And  the stunned child would murmur "nk you' and get given a balloon or an orange.

     This time, though, it didn't work like that.

     Mother got as far as 'You want a ...'

WHY ARE YOUR HANDS ON BITS OF STRING, CHILD?

     The child  looked  down the  length of its arms to the dangling mittens affixed to its sleeves. It held them up for inspection.

     'Clubs,' it said.

I SEE. VERY PRACTICAL.

     'Are you weal?' said the bobble hat.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

     The bobble  hat sniggered.  'I saw  your piggie do a wee!' it said, and implicit in  the  tone  was  the  suggestion  that this was unlikely  to  be dethroned as the most enthralling thing the bobble hat had ever seen.

OH. ER ... GOOD.

     'It had a gwate big ...'

     WHAT DO YOU WANT FOR HOGSWATCH? said the Hogfather hurriedly.

     Mother took her economic cue again, and said briskly: 'She wants a ...'

     The  Hogfather  snapped his  fingers  impatiently.  The  mother's mouth slammed shut.