tale of them remaineth incomplete unto this day. Edward himself,
cheering wildly, pursued the big Cochin-China cock till the bird
sank gasping under the drawing-room window, whereat its mistress
stood petrified; and after supper, in the shrubbery, smoked a
half-consumed cigar he had picked up in the road, and declared to
an awe-stricken audience his final, his immitigable, resolve to
go into the army.

The crisis was past, and Edward was saved! . . . And
yet . . . sunt lachrymae rerem . . . to me watching the cigar-
stump alternately pale and glow against the dark background of
laurel, a vision of a tip-tilted nose, of a small head poised
scornfully, seemed to hover on the gathering gloom--seemed to
grow and fade and grow again, like the grin of the Cheshire cat--
pathetically, reproachfully even; and the charms of the baker's
wife slipped from my memory like snow-wreaths in thaw. After
all, Sabina was nowise to blame: why should the child be
punished? To-morrow I would give them the slip, and stroll round
by her garden promiscuous-like, at a time when the farmer was
safe in the rick-yard. If nothing came of it, there was no harm
done; and if on the contrary. . . !



THE BURGLARS

It was much too fine a night to think of going to bed at once,
and so, although the witching hour of nine P.M. had struck,
Edward and I were still leaning out of the open window in our
nightshirts, watching the play of the cedar-branch shadows on the