 STORY No. 27 of THE TOYS OF PEACE, by Sackie The Toys of Peace, short stories by Sackie The Sheep The Enemy Had Declared No Trumps Rupert played out his ace and king of clubs, and cleared the adversary of that suit. Then the sheep, whom the fates had inflicted on him for a partner, took the third round with the queen of clubs, and having no other club to lead back, opened another suit. The enemy won the remainder of the tricks, and the rubber. I had four more clubs to play. We only wanted the odd trick to win the rubber, said Rupert. But I hadn't another club to lead you, exclaimed the sheep, with his ready defensive smile. It didn't occur to you to throw your queen away on my king, and leave me with the command of the suit, said Rupert, with polite bitterness. I suppose I ought to have. I wasn't certain what to do. I'm awfully sorry, said the sheep. Being awfully and uselessly sorry formed a large part of his occupation in life. If a similar situation had arisen in a subsequent hand, he would have blundered just as certainly, and he would have been just as irritatingly apologetic. Rupert stared gloomily across at him as he sat smiling and fumbling with his cards. Many men who have good brains for business do not possess the rudiments of a card-brain, and Rupert would not have judged and condemned his prospective brother-in-law on the evidence of his bridge-play alone. The tragic part of it was that he smiled and fumbled through life, just as fatuously and apologetically as he did at the card-table. And behind the defensive smile and the well-worn expression of regret, they shone a scarcely believable but quite obvious self-satisfaction. Every sheep of the pasture probably imagines that in an emergency it could become terrible as an army with banners. One has only to watch how they stamp their feet and stiffen their necks, when a minor object of suspicion comes into view and behaves meekly. And probably the majority of human sheep see themselves, in imagination, taking great parts in the world's more impressive dramas, forming swift, unerring decisions in moments of crisis, cowing mutinies, allaying panics, brave, strong, simple, but in spite of their natural modesty, always slightly spectacular. Why, in the name of all that is unnecessary and perverse, could Kathleen choose this man for her future husband? Was the question that Rupert asked himself ruefully. There was young Malcolm Athling, as nice-looking, decent, level-headed a fellow as anyone could wish to meet. Obviously her very devoted admirer, and yet she must throw herself away on this pale-eyed, weak-mouthed embodiment of self-approving inaptitude. If it had been merely Kathleen's own affair, Rupert would have shrugged his shoulders and philosophically hoped that she might make the best of an undeniably bad bargain. But Rupert had no heir. His own boy lay underground somewhere on the Indian frontier, in Goodley Company. And the property would pass in due course to Kathleen and Kathleen's husband. The sheep would live there in the beloved old home, rearing up other little sheep, fatuous and rabbit-faced and self-satisfied like himself, to dwell in the land and possess it. It was not a soothing prospect. Towards dusk on the afternoon following the bridge experience, Rupert and the sheep made their way homeward after a day's mixed shooting. The sheep's cartridge bag was nearly empty, but his game bag showed no sign of overcrowding. The birds he had shot at had seemed, for the most part, as impervious to death or damage as the hero of a melodrama. And for each failure to drop his bird he had some explanation or apology ready on his lips. Now he was striding along in front of his host, chattering happily over his shoulder, but obviously on the lookout for some belated rabbit or wood-pigeon that might happily be secured as an eleventh-hour addition to his bag. As they passed the edge of a small copse, a large bird rose from the ground and flew slowly toward the trees, offering an easy shot to the oncoming sportsman. The sheep banged forth with both barrels and gave an exultant cry, Hooray! I've shot a thundering big hawk! To be exact, you've shot a honey-buzzard. That is the hen-bird of one of the few pairs of honey-buzzards breeding in the United Kingdom. We've kept them under the strictest preservation for the last four years. Every game-keeper and village-gun loafer-foot twenty miles around has been warned and bribed and threatened to respect their sanctity. And egg-snatching agents have been carefully guarded against during the breeding season. Hundreds of lovers of rare birds have delighted in seeing their snapshot at portraits in country life. And now you've reduced the hen-bird to a lump of broken feathers. Rupert spoke quietly and evenly. But for a moment or two a gleam of positive hatred shone in his eyes. I say, I'm so sorry, said the sheep, with his apologetic smile. Of course I remember hearing about the buzzards. But somehow I didn't connect this bird with them. And it was such an easy shot. Yes, said Rupert. That was the trouble. Kathleen found him in the gun-room, smoothing out the feathers of the dead bird. She had already been told of the catastrophe. What a horrid misfortune, she said sympathetically. It was my dear Robbie who first discovered them, the last time he was home on leave. Don't you remember how excited he was about them? Let's go and have some tea. Both bridge and shooting were given arrest for the next two or three weeks. Death, who enters into no compacts with party whips, had forced a parliamentary vacancy on the neighbourhood at the least convenient season, and the local partisans on either side found themselves immersed in the discomforts of a mid-winter election. Rupert took his politics seriously and keenly. He belonged to that type of strangely but rather happily constituted individuals which these islands seemed to produce in fair plenty. Men and women who, for no personal profit or gain, go forth from their comfortable fire-sides or club-card-rooms to hunt to and fro in the mud and rain and wind, for the capture or tracking of a stray vote here and there on their party's behalf. Not because they think they ought to, but because they want to. And his energies were welcome enough on this occasion, for the seat was a closely disputed possession, and its loss or retention would count for much in the present position of the parliamentary game. With Kathleen to help him, he had worked his corner of the constituency with Trialus well-directed zeal, taking his share of the dull routine work as well as of the livelier episodes. The talking part of the campaign wound up on the eve of the poll, with a meeting in a centre where more undecided votes were supposed to be concentrated than anywhere else in the division. A good final meeting here would mean everything. And the speakers, local and imported, left nothing undone to improve the occasion. Rupert was down for the unimportant task of moving the complementary vote to the chairman, which should close the proceedings. I'm so hoarse! he protested when the moment arrived. I don't believe I can make my voice heard beyond the platform. Let me do it! said the sheep. I'm rather good at that sort of thing. The chairman was popular with all parties, and the sheep's opening words of complementary recognition received a round of applause. The orator smiled expansively on his listeners, and seized the opportunity to add a few words of political wisdom on his own account. People looked at the clock, or began to grope for umbrellas and discarded neck-wraps. Then in the midst of a string of meaningless platitudes the sheep delivered himself of one of those blundering remarks which travel from one end of a constituency to the other in half an hour, and are seized on by the other side as being more potent on their behalf than a ton of election literature. There was a general shuffling and muttering across the length and breadth of the hall, and a few hisses made themselves heard. The sheep tried to whittle down his remark, and the chairman unhesitatingly threw him over in his speech of thanks. But the damage was done. I'm afraid I lost touch with the audience rather over that remark, said the sheep afterwards, with his apologetic smile abnormally developed. You lost us the election, said the chairman, and he proved a true prophet. A month or so of winter sports seemed a desirable pick-me-up after the strenuous work and crowning discomforture of the election. Rupert and Kathleen hide them away to a small alpine resort that was just coming into prominence, and thither the sheep followed them in due course, in his role of husband-elect. The wedding had been fixed for the end of March. It was a winter of early and unseasonable thaws, and the far end of the local lake, at a spot where swift currents flowed into it, was decorated with notices written in three languages, warning skaters not to venture over certain unsafe patches. The folly of approaching two near these dangerous spots seemed to have a natural fascination for the sheep. I don't see what possible danger there can be, he protested with his inevitable smile when Rupert beckoned him away from the prescribed area. The milk that I put out on my windowsill last night was frozen an inch deep. It hadn't got a strong current flowing through it, said Rupert. In any case, there is not much sense in hovering around a doubtful piece of ice, when there are acres of good ice to skate over. The Secretary of the Ice Committee has warned you once already. A few minutes later Rupert heard a loud squeal of fear and saw a dark spot blotting the smoothness of the lake's frozen surface. The sheep was struggling helplessly in an ice-hole of his own making. Rupert gave one loud curse, and then dashed full tilt for the shore. Outside a low stable building on the lake's edge he remembered having seen a ladder. If he could slide it across the ice-hole before the sheep went under, the rescue would be comparatively simple work. Skaters were dashing up from a distance, and with the ladder's help they could get him out of his death-trap without having to trust themselves on the margin of rotten ice. Rupert sprang on to the surface of lumpy frozen snow and staggered to where the ladder lay. He had already lifted it when the rattle of a chain and a furious outburst of growls burst on his hearing, and he was dashed to the ground by a mass of white and tawny fur. A sturdy young yard-dog, frantic with the pleasure of performing his first piece of active guardian service, was ramping and snarling over him, rendering the task of regaining his feet or securing the ladder a matter of considerable difficulty. When he had at last succeeded in both efforts, he was just a hair's breadth too late to be of any use. The sheep had definitely disappeared under the ice-rift. Kathleen Affling and her husband stay the greater part of the year with Rupert, and the small Robbie stands in some danger of being idolized by a devoted uncle. But for twelve months of the year, Rupert's most inseparable and valued companion is a sturdy, tawny and white yard-dog. End of The Sheep Recording by Noel Badrian, County Offerly, Ireland Story number twenty-eight of The Toys of Peace This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recorded by Chuck Williamson, The Toys of Peace, Short Stories by Saki. The Oversight It's like a Chinese puzzle box, said Lady Prouch resentfully, staring at a scribbled list of names that spread over two or three loose sheets of note paper on her writing table. Most of the names had a pencil mark running through them. What is like a Chinese puzzle? asked Lena Lettalford briskly. She rather prided herself on being able to grapple with the minor problems of life. Getting people suitably sorted together, Sir Richard likes me to have a house party about this time of year and gives me a free hand as to whom I should invite. All he asks is that it should be a peaceable party with no frictions or unpleasantness. That seems reasonable enough, said Lena. Not only reasonable, my dear, but necessary. Sir Richard has his literary work to think of. You can't expect a man to concentrate on the tribal disputes of Central Asian clansmen when he's got social feuds blazing under his own roof. But why should they blaze? Why should there be feuds at all within the compass of a house party? Exactly! Why should they blaze, or why should they exist? Echoed Lady Prouch. The point is that they always do. We have been unlucky, persistently unlucky, now that I have come to look back on things. We have always got people of violently opposed views under one roof, and the result has been not merely unpleasantness but explosion. Do you mean people who disagree on matters of political opinion and religious views? Asked Lena. No, not that. The broader lines of political or religious difference don't matter. You can have Church of England and Unitarian and Buddhist under the same roof without courting disaster. The only Buddhist I have ever had down here quelled with everyone. But that was on account of his naturally squabblesome temperament. It had nothing to do with his religion. And I have always found that people can differ profoundly about politics and meet on perfectly good terms at breakfast. Now Miss Larba Jones, who was staying here last year, worships Lloyd George as a sort of wingless angel, while Mrs Walters, who was down here at the same time, privately considers him to be an antelope, let us say. An antelope? Well not an antelope exactly, but something with horns and hoofs and tail. Oh, I see. Still that didn't prevent them from being the chummiest of mortals on the tennis court and in the billiard room. They did quarrel finally about a lead in double hand of no trumps. But that, of course, is a thing that no account of judicious guest grouping could prevent. Mrs Walters got king named in and seven of clubs. You were saying that there were other lines of demarcation that caused the bother? Interrupted, Lena. Exactly! It is the minor differences in side issues that give so much trouble, said Lady Prouch. Not to my dying day shall I forget. Last year's upheaval over the suffragette question. Laura Hennysied left the house in a state of speechless indignation. But before she had reached that state she had used language that would not have been tolerated in the Austrian Reichsrath. Intensive bear gardening was Richard's description of the whole affair, and I don't think he exaggerated. Of course the suffragette question is a burning one and let's lose the most dreadful ill-feeling, said Lena. But one can generally find out beforehand what people's opinions. My dear, the year before it was worse. It was Christian science. Selena Gooby is a sort of high priestess of the cult, and she put down all opposition with a high hand. Then one evening after dinner Clovis Sangrayl put a wasp down her back to see if her theory about the non-existence of pain could be depended on in an emergency. The wasp was small but very efficient, and it had been soured in temper by being kept in a paper cage all the afternoon. Wasps don't stand confinement well. At least this one didn't. I don't think I ever realised till that moment what the word invective could be made to mean. I sometimes wake in the night and think I hear Selena describing Clovis's conduct in general character. That was the year that Sir Richard was writing his volume on domestic life in the Tatari. The critics all blamed it for a lack of concentration. He's engaged in a very important work this year, isn't he? Asked Lena. Lan Tenya and Tuckistan, said Lady Prouch. He is just at work on the final chapters and they require all the concentration he can give them. That is why I am so very anxious not to have any unfortunate disturbances this year. I have taken every precaution I can think of to bring non-conflicting and harmonious elements together. The only two people I am not quite easy about are the Atkinson man and Marcus Poppin. They are the two who will be down here longest together and if they are going to fall foul of one another about any burning questions, well, there will be much unpleasantness. Can't you find out anything about them? About their opinions, I mean. Anything, my dear Lena, there's scarcely anything that I haven't found out about them. They're both of them moderate liberal, evangelical, mildly opposed to female suffrage. They approve of the Falconer report and the Stuart's decision about Kragno. Thank goodness in this country we don't fly into violent passions about Wagner and Brahms and things of that sort. There is only one thorny subject that I haven't been able to make sure about. The only stone I have left unturned are their unanimously anti-vivisectionist or do they both uphold the necessity for scientific experiment. There has been a lot of correspondence on the subject in our local newspapers of late and the Vicar is certain to preach a sermon about it. Vicar's are dreadfully provocative at times. Now, if you could only find out for me whether these two men are divergently for or against. I, exclaimed Lena, how am I to find out? I don't know either of them to speak to. Still you might discover in some roundabout way, write to them under an assumed name, of course, for subscriptions to one or other cars. Or, better still, send a stamped typewritten reply postcard with the request for a declaration for or against vivisection. People who would hesitate to commit themselves to a subscription will cheerfully write yes or no on a prepaid postcard. If you can't manage it that way, try and meet them at someone's house and get into an argument on the subject. I think Millie occasionally has one or other of them at her at homes. You might have the luck to meet both of them there the same evening. Only it must be done soon. My invitations ought to go out by Wednesday or Thursday at the latest, and today is Friday. Millie's out-homes are not very amusing as a rule, said Lena, and one never gets a chance of talking uninterruptedly to anyone for a couple of minutes at a time. Millie is one of those restless hostesses who always seem to be trying to see how you look in different parts of the room and fresh grouping effects. Even if I got to speak to Popham or Atkinson, I couldn't plunge into a topic like vivisection straight away. No, I think the postcard scheme would be more hopeful and decidedly less tiresome. How would it be best to word them? Oh, something like this. Are you in favor of experiments on living animals for the purpose of scientific research? Yes or no! That is quite simple and unmistakable. If they don't answer, it will at least be an indication that they are indifferent about the subject and that is all I want to know. All right, said Lena. I'll get my brother-in-law to let me have them addressed to his office, and he can telephone the result of the plebiscite direct to you. Thank you ever so much, said Lady Prouch gratefully, and be sure to get the cards sent off as soon as possible. On the following Tuesday, the voice of an office clerk speaking through the telephone informed Lady Prouch that the postcard poll showed unanimous hostility to experiments on living animals. Lady Prouch thanked the office clerk and in a louder and more fervent voice she thanked heaven. The two invitations already sealed and addressed were immediately dispatched. In due course, they were both accepted. The House Party of the Halcyon Hours, as the prospective hostess called it, was auspiciously launched. Lena Lettalford was not included among the guest, having previously committed herself to another invitation. At the opening day of a cricket festival, however, she ran across Lady Prouch, who had motored over from the other side of the country. She wore the heir of one who was not interested in cricket and not particularly interested in life. She shook hands limply with Lena and remarked that it was a beastly day. The party, how has it gone off? Asked Lena quickly. Don't speak of it, was the tragical answer. Why do I always have such rotten luck? But what has happened? It has been awful. Hyenas could not have behaved with greater savagery. So Richard said so, and he has been in countries where hyenas live. So he ought to know they actually came to blows, blows, blows and curses. It really might have been a scene from one of Harga's pictures. I never felt so humiliated in my life, but the servants must have fought. But who were the offenders? Oh, naturally, the very two that we took all the trouble about. I thought they agreed on every subject that one could violently disagree about, religion, politics, vivisection, the derby decision, the Falconer report. What else was there left to quarrel about? My dear, we were fools not to have thought about it. One of them was pro-Greek, and the other pro-Bolga. End of the Oversight. Story number 29 of The Toys of Peace. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recorded by Andy. The Toys of Peace. Short stories by Sarky. Hyacinth. The new fashion of introducing the candidate's children into an election contest is a pretty one, said Mrs. Pam Streppen. It takes away something from the acerbity of party warfare, and it makes an interesting experience for children to look back on in after years. Still, if you will listen to my advice, Matilda, you will not take Hyacinth with you down to Lovebridge on election day. Not take Hyacinth, exclaimed his mother, but why not? Jutterley is bringing his three children, and they are going to drive a pair of Nubian donkeys about the town, to emphasise the fact that their father has been appointed colonial secretary. We are making the demand for a strong navy, a special feature in our campaign, and it will be particularly appropriate to have Hyacinth dressed in his sailor suit. He'll look heavenly. The question is not how he'll look, but how he'll behave. He's a delightful child, of course, but there is a strain of unbridled pugnacity in him that breaks out at times in a really alarming fashion. You may have forgotten the affair of the little Gaffin children. I haven't. I was in India at the time, and I've only a vague recollection of what happened. He was very naughty, I know. He was in his goat carriage, and met the Gaffins in their perambulator, and he drove the goat full tilt at them and sent the perambulator spinning. The little Jackie Gaffin was pinned down under the wreckage, and while the nurse had her hands full with the goat, Hyacinth was laying into Jackie's legs with his belt like a small fury. I'm not defending him, said Matilda, but they must have done something to annoy him. Nothing intentionally, but some one had unfortunately told him that they were half French. Their mother was a Duboc, you know, and he had been having a history lesson that morning, and had just heard of the final loss of Calais by the English and was furious about it. He said he'd teach the little toads to go snatching towns from us, but we didn't know at the time that he was referring to the Gaffins. I told him afterwards that all bad feeling between the two nations had died out long ago, and that anyhow the Gaffins were only half French, and he said it was only the French half of Jackie that he had been hitting. The rest had been buried under the perambulator. If the loss of Calais unleashed such fury in him, I trembled to think what the possible loss of the election might entail. All that happened when he was eight. He's older now and knows better. Children with higher-sense temperament don't know better as they grow older, they merely know more. Nonsense. He will enjoy the fun of the election, and in any case he'll be tired out by the time the poll is declared, and the new sailor suit that I've had made for him is just in the right shade of blue for our election colours, and it will exactly match the blue of his eyes. He will be a perfectly charming note of colour. There is such a thing as letting one's aesthetic sense override one's moral sense," said Mrs. Panstrapin. I believe you would have condoned the South Sea bubble and the persecution of the albigencies if they had been carried out in effective colour schemes. However, if anything unfortunate should happen down at Loughbridge, don't say it wasn't foreseen by one member of the family. The election was keenly but decorously contested. The newly appointed colonial secretary was personally popular, while the government to which he had heared was distinctly unpopular, and there was some expectancy that the majority of four hundred obtained at the last election would be altogether wiped out. Both sides were hopeful, but neither could feel confident. The children were a great success. The little jutterlies drove their chubby donkeys solemnly up and down the main streets, displaying posters which advocated the claims of their father on the broad general grounds that he was their father. While, as for Hyacinth, his conduct might have served as a model for any serif child that had strayed unwittingly onto the scene of an electoral contest. Of his own accord, and under the delighted eyes of half a dozen camera operators, he had gone up to the jutterly children and presented them with a packet of butterscotch. We needn't be enemies because we're wearing the opposite colours, he said, with engaging friendliness, and the occupants of the donkey cart accepted his offering with polite solemnity. The grown-up members of both political camps were delighted at the incident, with the exception of Mrs. Panstrepin, who shuddered. Never was polite him Nestra's kiss sweeter than on the night she slew me, she quoted, but made the quotation to herself. The last hour of the poll was a period of unremitting labour for both parties. It was generally estimated that not more than a dozen votes separated the candidates, and every effort was made to bring up obstinately wavering electors. It was with a feeling of relaxation and relief that everyone heard the clocks strike the hour for the close of the poll. Exclamations broke out from the tired workers and corks flew out from bottles. Well, if we haven't won, we've done our level best. It has been a clean, straight fight with no ranker. The children were quite a charming feature, weren't they? The children? It suddenly occurred to everybody that they had seen nothing of the children for the last hour, what had become of the three little jutterlies and their donkey-cut, and for the matter of that, what had become of Hyacinth? Hurried, anxious embassies went backwards and forwards between the respective party headquarters and the various committee rooms, but there was blank ignorance everywhere as to the whereabouts of the children. Everyone had been too busy in the closing moments of the poll to bestow a thought on them. Then there came a telephone call at the Unionist Women's Committee Rooms, and the voice of Hyacinth was heard demanding when the poll would be declared. Where are you, and where are the jutterly children? asked his mother. I've just finished having high tea at a pastry-cooks, came the answer, and they let me telephone. I've had a poached egg and a sautéed roll and four meringues. You'll be ill! Are the little jutterlies with you? Rather not! They're in a pigsty. A pigsty? Why? What pigsty? Near the Crawley Road, I met them driving about a back road and told them they were to have tea with me and put their donkeys in a yard that I knew of. Then I took them to see an old sow that had got ten little pigs. I got the sow into the outer sty by giving her bits of bread, while the jutterlies went in to look at the litter. Then I bolted the door and left them there. You wicked boy! Do you mean to say you've left those poor children there alone in the pigsty? They're not alone. They've got ten little pigs in with them. They're jolly well crowded. They were pretty mad at being shut in. But not half as mad as the old sow is at being shut out from her young ones. If she gets in while they're there, she'll bite them in to mincemeat. I can get them out by letting a short ladder down through the top window, and that's what I'm going to do if we win. If their blighted father gets in, I'm just going to open the door for the sow and let her do what she dashed well likes to them. That's why I want to know when the pole will be declared. Here the narrator rang off. A wild stampede and a frantic sending off of messages took place at the other end of the telephone. Nearly all the workers on either side had disappeared to their various club rooms and public house bars to await the declaration of the pole. But enough local information could be secured to determine the scene of Hyacinth's exploit. Mr. John Ball had a stable yard down near the Crawley Road, up a short lane, and his sow was known to have a litter of ten young ones. Thither went in headlong haste both the candidates, Hyacinth's mother, his aunt, Mrs. Panstrapin, and two or three hurriedly summoned friends. The two Nubian donkeys, contentedly munching at bundles of hay, met their gaze as they entered the yard. The horse's savage grunting of an enraged animal and the shriller note of thirteen young voices, three of them human, guided them to the sty, in the outer yard of which a huge Yorkshire sow kept up a ceaseless raging patrol before a closed door. Reclining on the broad ledge of an open window, from which point of vantage he could reach down and shoot the bolt of the door, was Hyacinth. His blue sailor suit, somewhat the worse of wear, and his angel smile exchanged for a look of demoniacal determination. If any of you come a step nearer, he shouted, the sow will be inside in half a jiffy. A storm of threatening, arguing and treating expostulation broke from the baffled rescue party, but it made no more impression on Hyacinth than the squealing tempest that raged within the sty. If Jutterly heads the pole, I'm going to let the sow in. I'll teach the blightest to win elections from us." He means it, said Mrs. Panstrapin. I feared the worst when I saw that Butterscotch incident. It's all right, my little man, said Jutterly, with a duplicity to which even a colonial secretary can sometimes stoop. Your father has been elected by a large majority. Liar retorted Hyacinth with the directness of speech that is not merely excusable but almost obligatory in the political profession. The votes aren't counted yet. You won't gammon me as to the result, either. A boy that I've paled with is going to fire a gun when the pole is declared. Two shots if we've won, one shot if we haven't." The situation began to look critical. Drug the sow, whispered Hyacinth's father. Someone went off in the motor to the nearest chemist's shop and returned presently with two large pieces of bread, liberally dosed with narcotic. The bread was thrown deftly and unostentatiously into the stye, but Hyacinth saw through the manoeuvre. He set up a piercing imitation of a small pig in purgatory, and the infuriated mother ramped round and round the stye. The pieces of bread were trampled into slush. At any moment now the pole might be declared. Jutterly flew back to the town hall where the votes were being counted. His agent met him with a smile of hope. You're eleven ahead at present, and only about eighty more to be counted. You're just going to squeak through. I mustn't squeak through, exclaimed Jutterly hoarsely. You must object to every doubtful vote on our side that can possibly be disallowed. I must not have the majority." Then was seen the unprecedented sight of a party agent challenging the votes on his own side, with a capturestness that his opponents would have hesitated to display. One or two votes that would have certainly passed muster under ordinary circumstances were disallowed, but even so Jutterly was six ahead with only thirty more to be counted. To the watches by the stye the moment seemed intolerable. As a last resort someone had been sent for a gun with which to shoot the south, though Hyacinth would probably draw the bolt the moment such a weapon was brought into the yard. Nearly all the men were away from their homes, however, on election night, and the messenger had evidently gone far afield in his search. It must be a matter of minutes now to the declaration of the pole. A sudden roar of shouting and cheering was heard from the direction of the town hall. Hyacinth's father clutched a pitchfork and prepared to dash into the stye in the forlorn hope of being in time. A shot rang out in the evening air. Hyacinth stooped down from his perch and put his finger on the bolt. The sow pressed furiously against the door. Bang! came another shot. Hyacinth wriggled back and sent a short ladder down through the window of the inner stye. Now you can come up, you unclean little blighters, he sang out. My daddy's got in, not yours. Hurry up! I can't keep the sow waiting much longer. And don't you jolly welcome butting into any election again, where I'm on the job. In the reaction that set in after the deliverance, furious recrimination were indulged in by the lately opposed candidates, their womenfolk, agents, and party-helpers. A recount was demanded, but failed to establish the fact that the colonial secretary had obtained a majority. Altogether the election left a legacy of soreness behind it, apart from any that was experienced by Hyacinth in person. It is the last time I shall let him go to an election, exclaimed his mother. There I think you are going to extremes, said Mrs. Panstrepin. If there should be a general election in Mexico, I think you might safely let him go there. But I doubt whether our English politics are suited to the rough and tumble of an angel child. STORY No. 30 of THE TOYS OF PEACE This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recorded by Noel Badrian. THE TOYS OF PEACE. SHORT STORIES by Saki. THE IMAGE OF THE LOST SOUL. There were a number of carved stone figures placed at intervals along the parapets of the old cathedral. Some of them represented angels, others kings and bishops, and nearly all were in attitudes of pious exaltation and composure. But one figure low down on the cold north side of the building had neither crown, miter nor nimbus, and its face was hard and bitter and downcast. It must be a demon, declared the fact-blue pigeons that roosted and sunned themselves all day on the ledges of the parapet. But the old belfry jack-door, who was an authority on ecclesiastical architecture, said it was a lost soul. And there the mat arrested. One autumn day they fluttered on to the cathedral roof, a slender, sweet-voiced bird that had wandered away from the bare fields and thinning hedge-rows in search of a winter-roosting place. It tried to rest its tired feet under the shade of a great angel-wing, or to nestle in the sculpted folds of a kingly robe. But the fat pigeons hustled it away from wherever it settled, and the noisy spherofolk drove it off the ledges. No respectable bird sang with so much feeling they chipped to one another, and the wanderer had to move on. Only the effigy of the lost soul offered a place of refuge. The pigeons did not consider it safe to perch on a projection that leaned so much out of the perpendicular, and was, besides, too much in the shadow. The figure did not cross its hands in the pious attitude of the other graven dignitaries, but its arms were folded as in defiance, and their angle made a snug resting place for the little bird. Every evening it crept trustfully into its corner against the stone breast of the image, and the darkling eyes seemed to keep watch over its slumbers. The lonely bird grew to love its lonely protector, and during the day it would sit from time to time on some rain-shoot or other abutment, and trill forth its sweetest music in grateful thanks for its nightly shelter. And it may have been the work of wind and weather, or some other influence, but the wild-drawn face seemed gradually to lose some of its hardness and unhappiness. Every day, through the long monotonous hours, the song of his little guest would come up in snatchers to the lonely watcher, and at evening, when the Vesper bell was ringing, and the great gray bats slid out of their hiding-places in the bell-free roof, the bright-eyed bird would return, Twitter refused sleepy notes, and nestle into the arms that were waiting for him. Those were happy days for the dark image. Only the great bell of the cathedral rang out daily its mocking message. After joy, sorrow! The folk in the verger's lodge noticed a little brown bird flittering about the cathedral precincts, and admired its beautiful singing. But it is a pity, said they, that all that warbling should be lost and wasted far out of hearing up on the parapet. They were poor, but they understood the principles of political economy, so they caught the bird and put it in a little wicker cage outside the lodge door. That night the little songster was missing from its accustomed haunt, and the dark image knew more than ever the bitterness of loneliness. Perhaps his little friend had been killed by a prowling cat, or hurt by a stone. Perhaps he had flown elsewhere. But when morning came they floated up to him through the noise and bustle of the cathedral world, a faint, heart-aking message from the prisoner in the wicker cage far below. And every day at high noon, when the fat pigeons were stupefied into silence after their midday meal, and the sparrow were washing themselves in the street puddles, the song of the little bird came up to the parapets, a song of hunger and longing and hopelessness, a cry that could never be answered. The pigeons remarked between mealtimes that the figure leaned forward more than ever out of the perpendicular. One day no song came up from the little wicker cage. It was the coldest day of the winter, and the pigeons and sparrows on the cathedral roof looked anxiously on all sides for the scraps of food which they were dependent on in hard weather. Herb the lodge folk thrown out anything onto the dust heap, inquired one pigeon of another which was peering over the edge of the north parapet. Only a little dead bird was the answer. There was a crackling sound in the night on the cathedral roof, and a noise as of falling masonry. The belfry Jack-Dor said the frost was affecting the fabric, and as he had experienced many frosts it must have been so. In the morning it was seen that the figure of the lost soul had toppled from its corners and lay now in a broken mass on the dust heap outside the verger's lodge. It is just as well crude the fat pigeons after they had peered at the matter for some minutes. Now we shall have a nice angel put up there. Certainly they will put an angel there. The joy sorrow rang out the great bell. End of the image of the lost soul. Recording by Noel Badrian, County Offaly, Ireland. Story number 31 of The Toys of Peace. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recorded by Maggie Smallwood. The Toys of Peace. Short stories by Sarkie. The Purple of the Balkan Kings. Nipol Balkenstein, financier and diplomat on a small, obtrusive, self-important scale. Sat in his favoured cafe in the worldwide Habsburg capital, confronted with the Neuer Freier Presse and the cup of cream topped coffee and attendant glass of water that a sleek-headed piccolo had just brought him. For years longer than a dog's lifetime, sleek-headed piccolos had placed the Neuer Freier Presse and a cup of cream topped coffee on his table. For years, he had sat at the same spot under the dust-coated stuffed eagle that had once been a living, soaring bird on the Styrian mountains and was now made monstrous and symbolical the second head grafted onto its neck and a gilt crown planted on either dusty skull. Today, Lutpol Balkenstein read no more than the first article in his paper, but read it again and again. The Turkish fortress of Kurt Kilise has fallen. The Serbs, it is officially announced, have taken Kumanovo. The fortress of Kurt Kilise lost. Kumanovo taken by the Serbs. These are tidings of Constantinople resembling something out of Shakespeare's tragedies of the kings. The neighborhood of Adrienopoli and the Eastern region where the great battle is now in progress will not reveal merely the future of Turkey but also what position and what influence the Balkan states are to have in the world. For years longer than a dog's lifetime, Lutpol Balkenstein had disposed of the pretensions and strivings of the Balkan states over the cup of cream-topped coffee but sleek-headed picolos had brought him. Never travelling further eastward than the horse farat Temesvar, never inviting personal risk in an encounter with anything more potentially desperate than a hair or a partridge, he had constituted himself the critical appraiser and arbiter of the military and national price of the small countries that fringed the dual monarchy on its Danube border. And his judgment had been one of unsparing contempt for small-scale efforts, of unquestioning respect for the big battalions and full purses. Over the whole scene of the Balkan territories and their troubled histories had loomed the commanding magic of the words, the great powers, even more imposing in their Teutonic rendering, di gross mechter. Worshipping power and force and money mastery as an elderly, nerve-ridden woman might worship youthful physical energy, the comfortable, plump-bodied cafe-oracle had gested and jibed at the ambitions of the Balkan kinglets and their peoples, had unleashed against them that battery of strange lip-sounds that a Viennese employs almost as an auxiliary language to express the thoughts and his thoughts are not complementary. British travellers had visited the Balkan lands and reported high things of the Bulgarians in their future. Russian officers had taken peeps at their army and confessed, this is a thing to be reckoned with. It is not we who have created it, they have done it by themselves. But over his cups of coffee and his hour-long games of dominoes, the oracle had laughed and wagged his head and distilled the worldly wisdom of his castle. The gross mechter had not succeeded in stifling the role of the wardrum, that was true. The big battalions of the Ottoman Empire would have to do some talking and then the big purses and big threatenings of the powers would speak and the last word would be with them. In imagination, Louis Paul heard the honoured tramp of the red-fesed bayonet bearers echoing through the Balkan passes. Saw the little sheepskin-clad mannequins driven back to their villages. Saw the augustly chiding spokesman of the powers dictating, adjusting, restoring, settling things once again in their allotted places. Sweeping up the dust of conflict and now his ears had to listen to the wardrum rolling in quite another direction. Had to listen to the tramp of battalions that were bigger and bolder and better skilled in warcraft than he had deemed possible in that quarter. His eyes had to read in the columns of his accustomed newspaper a warning to the gross mechter that they had something new to learn, something new to reckon with, much that was time-honoured to relinquish. The great powers will have not little difficulty in persuading the Balkan states of the inviolability of the principle that Europe cannot permit any fresh partition of territory in the East without her approval. Even now, while the campaign is still undecided, there are rumours of a project of fiscal unity extending over the entire Balkan lands and further of a constitutional union in imitation of the German Empire. That is perhaps only a political straw blown in by the storm but it is not possible to dismiss the reflection that the Balkan states leaked together command a military strength with which the great powers will have to reckon. The people who have poured out their blood on the battlefields and sacrificed the available armed men of an entire generation in order to encompass a union with their kinsfolk will not remain any longer in an attitude of dependence on the great powers or on Russia but will go their own ways. The blood that has been poured forth today gives for the first time a genuine tone to the purple of the Balkan kings. The great powers cannot overlook the fact that a people that has tasted victory will not let itself be driven back again within its former limits. Turkey has lost today not only Kyrgyzstan and Comonoval but Macedonia also. Newt Poldvolkanstein drank his coffee but the flavor had somehow gone out of it. His world, his pompous, imposing, dictating world had suddenly rolled up into narrower dimensions. The big purses and the big threats had been pushed unceremoniously to one side a force that he could not fathom, could not comprehend had made itself rudely felt. The august caesars of Mammon and the armament had looked down frowningly on the combat and those about to die had not saluted, had no intention of saluting. A lesson was being imposed on unwilling learners, a lesson of respect for certain fundamental principles and it was not the small struggling states who were being taught the lesson. Newt Poldvolkanstein did not wait for the quorum of domino players to arrive. They would all have read the article in The Friar Pressor and there are moments when an oracle finds its greatest salvation in withdrawing itself from the area of human questioning. End of The Purple of the Balkan Kings. Story number 32 of The Toys of Peace. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Christine G. The Toys of Peace. Short stories by Sarki. The cupboard of the yesterdays. War is a cruelly destructive thing, said the wanderer, dropping his newspaper to the floor and staring reflectively into space. Ah, yes indeed, said the merchant, responding readily to what seemed like a safe platitude. When one thinks of the loss of life and limb, the desolated homesteads, the ruined. I wasn't thinking of anything of the salt, said the wanderer. I was thinking of the tendency that modern war has to destroy and banish the very elements of picturesqueness and excitement that are its chief excuse and charm. It is like a fire that flares up brilliantly for a while and then leaves everything blacker and bleaker than before. After every important war in Southeast Europe in recent times, there has been a shrinking of the area of chronically disturbed territory, a stiffening of frontier lines and intrusion of civilized monotony. And imagine what may happen at the conclusion of this war if the Turk should really be driven out of Europe. Well, it would be a gain to the course of good government, I suppose, said the merchant. But have you counted the loss, said the other. The Balkans have long been the last surviving shred of happy hunting ground for the Adventorious, a playground for passions that are fast becoming athrophied for want of exercise. In all bygone days, we have the wars of the low countries always at our doors. As it were, there was no need to go far afield in malaria stricken wilds if one wanted a life of boot and saddle and licensed to kill and be killed. Those who wished to see life had a decent opportunity for seeing death at the same time. It is scarcely right to talk of killing and bloodshed in that way, said the merchant reprovingly. One must remember that all men are brothers. One must also remember that a large percentage of them are younger brothers. Instead of going into bankruptcy, which is the usual tendency of the younger brother nowadays, they gave their families a fair chance of going into mourning. Every bullet finds a billet according to a rather optimistic proverb. And you must admit that nowadays it is becoming increasingly difficult to find billets for a lot of young gentlemen who would have adorned and probably thoroughly enjoyed one of the all-time happy-go-lucky wars. But that is not exactly the burden of my complaint. The Balkan lands are especially interesting to us in these rapidly moving days because they afford us the last remaining glimpse of a vanishing period of European history. When I was a child, one of the earliest events of the outside world that forced itself coherently under my notice was a war in the Balkans. I remember a sunburnt, soldierly man putting little pin flags in a war map, red flags for the Turkish forces and yellow flags for the Russians. It seemed a magical region with its mountain passes and frozen rivers and grim battlefields, its drifting snows and prowling wolves. There was a great stretch of water that bore the sinister but engaging name of the Black Sea. Nothing that I ever learned before or after in a geography lesson made the same impression on me as that strange named inland sea. And I don't think its magic has ever faded out of my imagination. And there was a battle called Plevna that went on and on with the varying fortunes for what seemed like a great party of a lifetime. I remember the day of wrath and mourning when the little red flag had to be taken away from Plevna. Like other mature judges, I was backing the wrong horse at any rate the losing horse. And now today we are putting little pin flags again into maps of the Balkan region. And the passions are being turned loose once more in their playground. The war will be localised, said the merchant vaguely, at least everyone hoped so. I couldn't wish for a better locality, said the wanderer. There is a charm about those countries that you find nowhere else in Europe, the charm of uncertainty and landslide and the little dramatic happenings that make all the difference between the ordinary and the desirable. Life is held very cheap in those parts, said the merchant. To a certain extent, yes, said the wanderer. I remember a man at Sofia who used to teach me Bulgarian in a rather inefficient manner, interspersed with a lot of quite wearism gossip. I never knew what his personal history was, but that was only because I didn't listen. He told it to me many times. After I left Bulgaria, he used to send me Sofia newspapers from time to time. I felt that he would be rather tiresome if I ever went there again. And then I heard afterwards that some men came in one day from heaven knows where, just as things do happen in the Balkans, and murdered him in the open street and went away as quietly as they had come. You will not understand it, but to me there was something rather bequant in the idea of such a thing happening to such a man. After his dullness and his long-winded small talk, it seemed a sort of brilliant Esprit des Allières on his part to meet with an end of such ruthlessly planned and executed violence. The merchant shook his head. The frequency of the incident was not within striking distance of his comprehension. I should have been shocked at hearing such a thing about anyone I had known, he said. The present war continued his companion, without stopping to discuss two helplessly divergent point of view. Maybe the beginning of the end of much that has hitherto survived the resistless creeping in of civilization. If the Balkan lands are to be finely parceled out between the competing Christian kingdoms, and a haphazard rule of the Turk banished to be on the sea of Mamora, the old order, or disorder, if you like, will have received its death blow. Something of its spirit will linger perhaps for a while in the old charmed regions where it bores way. The Greek villages will doubtless be restless and turbulent and unhappy with the Bulgarous rule, and the Bulgars will certainly be restless and turbulent and unhappy under Greek administration. And the rival flocks of the Exarchate and the Patriarchate will make themselves intensely disagreeable to one another wherever the opportunity offers. The habits of a lifetime, of several lifetimes, are not laid aside all at once. And the Albanians, of course, we shall have with us still, a troubled Muslim pool left by the receding wave of Islam in Europe. But the old atmosphere will have changed, the glamour will have gone, the dust of formality and bureaucracy, neatness will slowly settle down over the time-honoured landmarks. The Sanjak of Novibazar, the Moor Steg Agreement, the Komichadje bands, the Villaet of Adrianople, all those familiar outlandish names and things and places that we have known so long as part and parcel of the Balkan question will have passed away into the cupboard of yesterdays as completely as the Hansa League in the walls of the Gaises. There were the heritage that history handed down to us, spoiled and diminished no doubt in comparison with yet earlier days that we never knew, but still something to thrill and enliven one little corner of our continent, something to help us to conjure up in our imagination the days when the Turk was thundering at the gates of Vienna. And what shall we have to hand down to our children? Think of what their news of the Balkans will be in the course of another 10 or 15 years. Socialist Congress at Uskub, election right at Monastir, great dock strike at Salonika, visit of the YMCA to Varna, Varna on the coast of that enchanted sea, they will drive out to some Serb up to T and write home about it as the Bexill of the East. War is a wicked destructive thing. Still you must admit began the merchant, but the wanderer was not in the mood to admit anything. He rose impatiently and walked away the tape machine was busy with the news from Adrianople. End of the cupboard of the yesterdays, recording by Christine G. in Oslo, Norway, the 23rd of February, 2012. Story number 33 of the Toys of Peace. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recorded by Noel Badrian. The Toys of Peace, short stories by Saki. For the duration of the war, the Reverend Wilfred Gaspilton, in one of those clerical migrations, inconsequential seeming to the lay mind, had removed from the moderately fashionable parish of St. Luke's, Kensingate, to the immoderately rural parish of St. Chuddox, somewhere in Yondershire. There were doubtless substantial advantages connected with the move, but there were certainly some very obvious drawbacks. Neither the migratory clergyman nor his wife were able to adapt themselves naturally and comfortably to the conditions of country life. Beryl, Mrs. Gaspilton, had always looked indulgently on the country as a place where people were very approachable income and hospitable instincts, cultivated tennis lawns and rose gardens, and Jacobian pleasantries, wherein selected gatherings of interested weekend guests might despot themselves. Mrs. Gaspilton considered herself as distinctly an interesting personality, and from a limited standpoint, she was doubtless right. She had indolent dark eyes and a comfortable chin, which belied the slightly plaintive inflection which she threw into her voice at suitable intervals. She was tolerably well-satisfied with the smaller advantages of life, but she regretted that fate had not seen its way to reserve for her some of the ample successes for which she felt herself well-qualified. She would have liked to be the center of a literary, slightly political salon where disowning satellites might have recognized the breadth of her outlook on human affairs and the undoubted smallness of her feet. As it was, Destiny had chosen for her that she should be the wife of a rector, and had now further decreed that a country rector should be the background to her existence. She rapidly made up her mind that her surroundings did not call for exploration. Noah had predicted the flood, but no one expected him to swim about in it. Digging in a wet garden or trudging through muddy lanes were exertions which she did not propose to undertake. As long as the garden produced asparagus and carnations had pleasingly frequent intervals, Mrs. Gaspleton was content to approve of its expense and otherwise ignore its existence. She would fold herself up, so to speak, in an elegant, indolent little world of her own, enjoying the minor recreations of being gently rude to the doctor's wife and continuing the leisurely production of her one literary effort, The Forbidden Hosspond, a translation of Baptiste Lyopoise, Lo Brevoir Intédit. It was a labor which had already been so long drawn out that it seemed probable that Baptiste Lyopois would drop out of vogue before her translation of his temporarily famous novel was finished. However, the languid prosecution of the work had invested Mrs. Gaspleton with a certain literary dignity, even in Kensingate circles, and would place her on a pinnacle in St. Chadex, where hardly anyone read French, and assuredly no one had heard of Lo Brevoir Intédit. The rector's wife might be content to turn her back complacently on the country. It was the rector's tragedy that the country turned its back on him. With the best intention in the world, and the immortal example of Gilbert White before him, the revered Wilfred found himself as bored and ill at ease in his new surroundings as Charles II would have been at a modern Wesleyan conference. The birds that hopped across his lawn, hopped across it as though it were their lawn, and not his, and gave him plainly to understand that in their eyes he was infinitely less interesting than a garden worm or the rectoric cat. The hedge-side and meadow flowers were equally uninspiring. The lesser selendine seemed particularly unworthy of the attention that English poets had bestowed on it, and the rector knew that he would be utterly miserable if left alone for a quarter of an hour in its company. With the human inhabitants of his parish, he was no better off. To know them was merely to know their ailments, and the ailments were almost invariably rheumatism. Some, of course, had other bodily infirmities, but they always had rheumatism as well. The rector had not yet grasped the fact that in rural cottage life not to have rheumatism is as glaring an omission as not to have been presented at court would be in more ambitious circles. And with all this death of local interest, there was Beryl shutting herself off with her ridiculous labors on the Forbidden Horse-Pond. I don't see why you should suppose that anyone wants to read Baptist LePoy in English, that Reverend Wilford remarked to his wife one morning, finding her surrounded with her usual elegant litter of dictionaries, fountain pens, and scribbling paper. Hardly anyone bothers to read him now in France. My dear, said Beryl, with an intonation of gentle weariness, haven't two or three leading London publishers told me they wondered no one had ever translated Le Brevoir Entity, and begged me, publishers always clamour for the books that no one has ever written, and turn a cold shoulder on them as soon as they're written. If St. Paul were living now, they would pass to him to write an epistle to the Esquimo, but no London publisher would dream of reading his epistle to the Ephesians. Is there any asparagus in the garden? asked Beryl, because I've told Cook. Not anywhere in the garden, snapped the rector. But there is no doubt plenty in the asparagus bed, which is the usual place for it. And he walked away into the region of fruit trees and vegetable beds to exchange irritation for boredom. It was there amongst the gooseberry bushes and beneath the medlet trees, that the temptation to the perpetration of a great literary fraud came to him. Some weeks later the bimonthly review gave to the world under the guarantee of the Reverend Wilfred Gasbilton some fragments of Persian verse, alleged to have been unearthed and translated by a nephew who was at present campaigning somewhere in the Tigris Valley. The Reverend Wilfred possessed a host of nephews, and it was of course quite possible that one or more of them might be in military employ in Mesopotamia, though no one could call to mind any particular nephew who could have been suspected of being a Persian scholar. The verses were attributed to one Gourab, a hunter, or according to other accounts, warden of the royal fishponds who lived in some unspecified century in the neighborhood of Karman Shah. They breathed the spirit of comfortable, even-tempered satire and philosophy, disclosing a mockery that did not trouble to be bitter, a joy in life that was not passionate to the verge of being troublesome. A mouse that prayed for Allah's aid, blasphemed when no such aid befell, a cat who feasted on that mouse, thought Allah managed vastly well. Pray not for aid to one who made a set of never-changing laws, but in your need remember well he gave you speed or guile or claws. Some lord a life of mild content. Content may fall as well as pride. The frog who hugged his lowly ditch was much disgruntled when it dried. You are not on the road to hell, you tell me with fanatically. Then boaster, what shall that avail if hell is on the road to thee? A poet praised the evening star, another praised the parrot's hue, a merchant praised his merchandise, and he at least praised what he knew. It was this verse which gave the critics and commentators some clue as to the probable date of the composition. The parrot, they reminded the public, was in high vogue as a type of elegance in the days of Hafis of Shiraz. In the quatrains of Omar it makes no appearance. The next verse, it was pointed out, would apply to the political conditions of the present day as strikingly as to the region and era for which it was written. A sultan dreamed day long of peace. The while his rival's armies grew, they changed his daydreams into sleep. The peace me thinks he never knew. Woman appeared little, and wine not at all in the verse of the hunter-poet. But there was at least one contribution to the love philosophy of the East. O moon-faced charmer and star-drowned eyes, and cheeks of soft delight, exaling musk, they tell me that thy charms will fade. Ah, well. The rose itself grows hueless in the dusk. Finally, there was a recognition of the inevitable, a chill breath blowing across the poet's comfortable estimate of life. There is a sadness in each dawn, a sadness that you cannot read. The joyous day brings in its train, the feast, the loved one, and the steed. Ah, there shall come a dawn at last that brings no life stirred to your ken, a long cold dawn without a day, and ye shall read its sadness then. The verses of Garab came on the public at a moment when a comfortable, slightly quizzical philosophy was certain to be welcome, and their reception was enthusiastic. Elderly kernels who had outlived the love of truth wrote to the papers to say that they had been familiar with the works of Garab in Afghanistan and Aden and other suitable localities a quarter of a century ago. A Garab of Karman Shark Club sprang into existence, the members of which alluded to each other as brother-Gurabians, on the slightest provocation. And to the flood of inquiries, criticisms and requests for information which naturally poured in on the discoverer, or rather the disclosure of this long-hidden poet, the reverent Wilfred made one effectual reply. Military considerations forbade any disclosures which might throw unnecessary light on his nephew's movements. After the war the rectus position will be one of unthinkable embarrassment, but for the moment at any rate he has driven the forbidden horse-pond out of the field. End of For the duration of the war End of The Toys of Peace by Saki Recording by Noe Badrian, County Offaly, Ireland