The irrepressible Chancellor of the Exchequer was still talking
about the birds he had brought down, the birds that Burke and
Halkett had brought down, and the birds that Jenkins, their host,
had failed to bring down. It seemed to be a sort of sociable
monomania.

"You and your big game," he ejaculated, aggressively, to Burke.
"Why, anybody could shoot big game. You want to be a shot to shoot
small game."

"Quite so," interposed Horne Fisher. "Now if only a hippopotamus
could fly up in the air out of that bush, or you preserved flying
elephants on the estate, why, then--"

"Why even Jink might hit that sort of bird," cried Sir Howard,
hilariously slapping his host on the back. "Even he might hit a
haystack or a hippopotamus."

"Look here, you fellows," said Fisher. "I want you to come along
with me for a minute and shoot at something else. Not a
hippopotamus. Another kind of queer animal I've found on the estate.
It's an animal with three legs and one eye, and it's all the colors
of the rainbow."

"What the deuce are you talking about?" asked Burke.

"You come along and see," replied Fisher, cheerfully.

Such people seldom reject anything nonsensical, for they are always
seeking for something new. They gravely rearmed themselves from the