affairs. It's hard enough having to do the ordinary work and keep up
your cricket at the same time.'

'They are compulsory then?'

'Yes. Swindle, I call it. The chap who shares my study at Beckford is
in the Upper Fifth, and his hair's turning white under the strain. The
worst of it is, too, that I've promised to help him, and I never seem
to have any time to give to the thing. I could turn out a great poem if
I had an hour or two to spare now and then.'

'What's the subject?'

'Death of Dido this year. They are always jolly keen on deaths. Last
year it was Cato, and the year before Julius Caesar. They seem to have
very morbid minds. I think they might try something cheerful for a
change.'

'Dido,' said the Colonel dreamily. 'Death of Dido. Where have I heard
either a story or a poem or a riddle or something in some way connected
with the death of Dido? It was years ago, but I distinctly remember
having heard somebody mention the occurrence. Oh, well, it will come
back presently, I dare say.'

It did come back presently. The story was this. A friend of Colonel
Ashby's--the one-time colonel of his regiment, to be exact--was an
earnest student of everything in the literature of the country that
dealt with Sport. This gentleman happened to read in a publisher's list
one day that a limited edition of _The Dark Horse_, by a Mr Arthur
James, was on sale, and might be purchased from the publisher by all