"Sir?" said the stripling, with a winning smile, lifting his cap with
the air of a D'Orsay.

"What business have you in my wood?"

"Not business," corrected the visitor, "pleasure."

"Come here!" shrilled the novelist.

The stranger receded coyly.

Mr. Watson advanced at the double.

His quarry dodged behind a tree.

For five minutes the great man devoted his powerful mind solely to the
task of catching his visitor.

The latter, however, proved as elusive as the point of a half-formed
epigram, and at the end of the five minutes he was no longer within
sight.

Mr. Watson went off and addressed his keeper in terms which made that
worthy envious for a week.

"It's eddication," he said subsequently to a friend at the "Cowslip
Inn." "You and me couldn't talk like that. It wants eddication."

For the next few days the keeper's existence was enlivened by visits
from what appeared to be a most enthusiastic bird's-nester. By no