and end of the Gay Whirl.

There was a local etiquette governing the game of billiards at the
'Feathers'. You played the marker a hundred up, then you took him
into the bar-parlour and bought him refreshment. He raised his
glass, said, 'To you, sir', and drained it at a gulp. After that
you could, if you wished, play another game, or go home, as your
fancy dictated.

There was only one other occupant of the bar-parlour when we
adjourned thither, and a glance at him told me that he was not
ostentatiously sober. He was lying back in a chair, with his feet
on the side-table, and crooning slowly, in a melancholy voice, the
following words:

_'I don't care--if he wears--a crown,
He--can't--keep kicking my--dawg aroun'.'_

He was a tough, clean-shaven man, with a broken nose, over which
was tilted a soft felt hat. His wiry limbs were clad in what I put
down as a mail-order suit. I could have placed him by his
appearance, if I had not already done so by his voice, as an
East-side New Yorker. And what an East-side New Yorker could be
doing in Sanstead it was beyond me to explain.

We had hardly seated ourselves when he rose and lurched out. I saw
him pass the window, and his assertion that no crowned head should
molest his dog came faintly to my ears as he went down the street.

'American!' said Miss Benjafield, the stately barmaid, with strong