that the beans he gave her weren't even fit for a dog. I loved her for
her pluck in standing up to him; it beat his hollow in standing up to me;
there was only one reward for her, and it was in my gift."

"But how on earth did you manage that?"

"Not by public presentation, Bunny, nor yet by taking the old dame into
my confidence _more cuniculi!"_

"I suppose you returned the necklace anonymously?"

"As a low-down German burglar would be sure to do! No, Bunny, I planted
it in the woods where I knew it would be found. And then I had to watch
lest it was found by the wrong sort. But luckily Mr. Shylock had sprung a
substantial reward, and all came right in the end. He sent his doctor to
blazes, and had a buck feed and lashings on the night it was recovered.
The hunting man and I were invited to the thanksgiving spread; but I
wouldn't budge from the diet, and he was ashamed to unless I did. It made
a coolness between us, and now I doubt if we shall ever have that
enormous dinner we used to talk about to celebrate our return from a
living tomb."

But I was not interested in that shadowy fox-hunter. "Dan Levy's a
formidable brute to tackle," said I at length, and none too buoyantly.

"That's a very true observation, Bunny; it's also exactly why I so looked
forward to tackling him. It ought to be the kind of conflict that the
halfpenny press have learnt to call Homeric."

"Are you thinking of to-morrow, or of when it comes to robbing Peter to