 The She-Wolf From Beasts and Super-Beasts by Sarky Leonard Bill Citer was one of those people who have failed to find this world attractive or interesting, and who have sought compensation in an unseen world of their own experience or imagination or invention. Children do this sort of thing successfully, but children are content to convince themselves, and do not vulgarize their beliefs by trying to convince other people. Leonard Bill Citer's beliefs were for the few—that is to say, anyone who'd listened to him. His dabblings in the unseen might not have carried him beyond the customary platitudes of the drawing-room visionary, if accident had not reinforced his stock-in-trade of mystical law. In company with a friend who was interested in a Euro-mining concern, he had made a trip across Eastern Europe, at a moment when the great Russian railway strike was developing from a threat to a reality. Its outbreak caught him on the return journey somewhere on the further side of Perm, and it was while waiting for a couple of days at a wayside station in a state of suspended locomotion that he made the acquaintance of a dealer in harness and metalware, who profitably wild-way the tedium of the long halt by initiating his English travelling companion in a fragmentary system of folklore that he had picked up from trans-bicale traders and natives. Leonard returned to his home's circle, garrulous about his Russian strike experiences, but oppressively reticent about certain dark mysteries which he alluded to under the resounding title of Siberian magic. The reticents wore off in a week or two, under the influence of an entire lack of general curiosity, and Leonard began to make more detailed allusions to the enormous powers which this new esoteric force, to use his own description of it, conferred on the initiated few who knew how to wield it. His aunt, Cecilia Hoops, who loved sensation perhaps rather better than she loved the truth, gave him as clamorous an advertisement as any one could wish for, by retailing an account of how he had turned a vegetable marrow into a wood-pigeon before her very eyes. As a manifestation of the possession of supernatural powers, the story was discounted in some quarters by the respect accorded to Mrs. Hoops' powers of imagination. However divided opinion might be on the question of Leonard's status as a wonder-worker or a charlatan, he certainly arrived at Mary Hampton's house-party, with a reputation for preeminence in one or other of those professions, and he was not disposed to shun such publicity as might fall to his share. Esoteric forces and unusual powers figured largely in whatever conversation he or his aunt had a share in, but his own performances, past and potential, were the subject of mysterious hints and dark avowals. I wish you would turn me into a wolf, Mr. Bill Citer, said his hostess at luncheon the day after his arrival. My dear Mary, said Colonel Hampton, I never knew you had a craving in that direction. A she-wolf, of course, continued Mrs. Hampton, it would be too confusing to change one's sex as well as one's species and one's notice. I don't think one should jest on these subjects, said Leonard. I'm not jesting. I'm quite serious, I assure you. Only don't do it today. We have only eight available bridge-players, and it would break up one of our tables. Tomorrow we shall be a larger party, tomorrow night, after dinner. In our present imperfect understanding of these hidden forces I think one should approach them with humbleness rather than mockery, observed Leonard, with such severity that the subject was forthwithdropped. Clovis Sangrell had sat unusually silent during the discussion on the possibilities of Siberian magic. After lunch he sidetracked Lord Pabham into the comparative seclusion of the billiard-room and delivered himself of a search in question. Have you such a thing as a she-wolf in your collection of wild animals? A she-wolf of moderately good temper? Lord Pabham considered. There is Louisa, he said, a rather fine specimen of the timber-wolf. I got her two years ago in exchange for some arctic foxes. Most of my animals get to be fairly tame before they've been with me very long. I think I can say Louisa has an angelic temper, as she-wolves go. Why do you ask? I was wondering whether you'd lend her to me for tomorrow night, said Clovis, with the careless solicitude of one who borrows a colostar or a tennis racket. Tomorrow night. Yes, wolves are nocturnal animals, so the late hours won't hurt her, said Clovis, with the air of one who has taken everything into consideration. One of your men could bring her over from Pabham Park after dusk, and with a little help he ought to be able to smuggle her into the conservatory at the same moment that Mary Hampton makes an unobtrusive exit. Lord Pabham stared at Clovis for a moment in pardonable bewilderment, then his face broke into a wrinkled network of laughter. Oh! that's your game, is it? You're going to do a little Siberian magic on your own, can't you? And is Mrs. Hampton willing to be a fellow conspirator? Mary is pledged to see me through with it, if you will guarantee Louisa's temper. I'll answer for Louisa, said Lord Pabham. By the following day the house-party had swollen to larger proportions, and Bilciter's instinct for self-advertisement expanded duly under the stimulant of an increased audience. At dinner that evening he held forth at length on the subject of unseen forces and untested powers, and his flow of impressive eloquence continued unabated while coffee was being served in the drawing-room, preparatory to a general migration to the card-room. His aunt ensured a respectful hearing for his utterances, but her sensation-loving soul hankered after something more dramatic than mere vocal demonstration. Won't you do something to convince them of your powers, Leonard? she pleaded. Change something into another shape. He can, you know, if he only chooses to, she informed the company. Oh, do! said Mavis Pellington earnestly, and her request was echoed by nearly every one present. Even those who were not open to conviction were perfectly willing to be entertained by an exhibition of amateur conjuring. Leonard felt that something tangible was expected of him. Has any one present? he asked. Got a threap any bit, or some small object of no particular value? You're surely not going to make coins disappear, or something primitive of that sort," said Clovis contemptuously. I think it's very unkind of you not to carry out my suggestion of turning me into a wolf," said Mary Hampton, as she crossed over the conservatory, to give her my cause, their usual tribute from the dessert-dishes. I've already warned you of the danger of treating these powers in a mocking spirit," said Leonard solemnly. I don't believe you can do it," laughed Mary provocatively from the conservatory. I dare you to do it if you can. I defy you to turn me into a wolf." As she said this, she was lost to view behind a clump of azaleas. Mrs. Hampton began Leonard with increased solemnity, but he got no further. A breath of chill air seemed to rush across the room, and at the same time the macaws broke forth into ear-splitting screams. What on earth is the matter with those confounded birds, Mary? exclaimed Colonel Hampton. At the same moment an even more piercing scream from Mavis Pellington stampeded the entire company from their seats. In various attitudes of helpless horror or instinctive defence they confronted the evil-looking gray beast that was peering at them from amid a setting of fern and azalea. Mrs. Hoops was the first to recover from the general chaos of fright and bewilderment. Leonard! she screamed shrilly to her nephew. Turn it back into Mrs. Hampton at once. It may fly at us at any moment. Turn it back! I—I don't know how to! faltered Leonard, who looked more scared and horrified than anyone. What, shouted Colonel Hampton, you've taken the abominable liberty of turning my wife into a wolf, and now you stand there calmly and say you can't turn her back again. To do strict justice to Leonard, calmness was not a distinguishing feature of his attitude at the moment. I assure you I didn't turn Mrs. Hampton into a wolf. Nothing was further from my intentions, he protested. Then where is she, and how came that animal into the conservatory? demanded the Colonel. Of course we must accept your assurance that you didn't turn Mrs. Hampton into a wolf, said Clevis politely, but you will agree that appearances are against you. Are we to have all these criminations with that beast standing there ready to tear us to pieces? wailed Mavis indignantly. Lord Pabham, you know a good deal about wild beasts, suggested Colonel Hampton. The wild beasts that I've been accustomed to, said Lord Pabham, have come with proper credentials from well-known dealers, or have been bred in my own menagerie. I've never before been confronted with an animal that walks unconcernedly out of an azalea bush, leaving a charming and popular hostess unaccounted for. As far as one can judge from outward characteristics, he continued, it has the appearance of a well-grown female of the North American Timberwolf, a variety of the common species Carnus lupus. Oh, never mind its latin name, screamed Mavis as the beast came a step or two further into the room. Can't you entice it away with food, and shut it up when it can't do any harm? If it is really Mrs. Hampton, who has just had a very good dinner, I don't suppose food will appeal to it very strongly, said Clavis. Leonard, beseeched Mrs. Hoops tearfully, even if this is none of your doing, can't you use your great powers to turn this dreadful beast into something harmless before it bites us all, a rabbit or something? I don't suppose Colonel Hampton would care to have his wife turned into a succession of fancy animals, as though we were playing a round game with her, interposed Clavis. I absolutely forbid it, thundered the Colonel. Most wolves that I've had anything to do with have been inordinately fond of sugar, said Lord Pavan. If you like, I'll try the effect on this one. He took a piece of sugar from the saucer of his coffee cup, and flung it to the expectant Louisa, who snapped it in mid-air. There was a sigh of relief from the company. A wolf that ate sugar, when it might at the least have been employed in tearing a cause to pieces, had already shared some of its terrors. The sigh deepened to a gasp of thanksgiving when Lord Pavan decoyed the animal out of the room by a pretended largesse of further sugar. There was an instant rush to the vacated conservatory. There was no trace of Mrs. Hampton, except the plate containing the McCaw's supper. The door is locked on the inside, exclaimed Clavis, who had deftly turned the key as he affected to test it. Everyone turned towards Bill Citer. If you haven't turned my wife into a wolf, said Colonel Hampton, will you kindly explain where she has disappeared to, since she obviously could not have gone through a locked door? I will not press you for an explanation of how a North American timber wolf suddenly appeared in the conservatory, but I think I have some right to inquire what has become of Mrs. Hampton. Bill Citer's reiterated disclaimer was met with the general murmur of impatient disbelief. I refuse to stay another hour under this roof!" declared Miss Pellington. If our hostess has really vanished out of human form, said Mrs. Hoops, none of the ladies of the party can very well remain, I absolutely decline to be chaperoned by a wolf. It's a she-wolf, said Clavis soothingly. The correct etiquette to be observed under the unusual circumstances received no further elucidation. The sudden entry of Mary Hampton deprived the discussion of its immediate interest. Someone has mesmerized me, she exclaimed crossly. I found myself in the game larder of all places, being fed with sugar by Lord Pabham. I hate being mesmerized, and the doctor has forbidden me to touch sugar. The situation was explained to her as far as it permitted of anything that could be called explanation. Then you really did turn me into a wolf, Mr. Bill Citer, she exclaimed excitedly. But Leonard had burned the boat in which he might now have embarked on a sea of glory. He could only shake his head feebly. It was I who took that liberty, said Clavis. You see, I happen to have lived for a couple of years in northeastern Russia, and I have more than a tourist acquaintance with the magic craft of that region. One does not care to speak about these strange powers, but once in a way, when one hears a lot of nonsense being talked about them, one is tempted to show what Siberian magic can accomplish in the hands of someone who really understands it. I yielded to that temptation. May I have some brandy? The effort has left me rather faint. If Leonard Bill Citer could, at that moment, have transformed Clavis into a cockroach, and then have stepped on him, he would gladly have performed both operations. End of The She-Wolf Laura from Beasts and Superbeasts by Saki This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Laura by Saki You're not really dying, are you? asked Amanda. I have the doctor's permission to live till Tuesday, said Laura. But the day is Saturday. This is serious, cast Amanda. Well, I don't know about it being serious. It certainly is Saturday, said Laura. Death is always serious, said Amanda. I never said I was going to die. I am presumably going to leave off being Laura, but I shall go on being something, an animal of some kind, I suppose. You see, when one hasn't been very good in the life one has just lived, one reincarnates in some lower organism, and I haven't been very good when one comes to think of it. I've been pre-mean and vindictive and all that sort of thing when circumstances have seemed to warrant it. Circumstances never warrant that sort of thing, said Amanda hastily. If you don't mind my saying so, observed Laura, Egbert is a circumstance that would warrant any amount of that sort of thing. You're married to him. That's different. You've sworn to love, honour and endure him. I haven't. I don't see what's wrong with Egbert, protested Amanda. Oh, I dare say the wrongness has been on my part, admitted Laura dispassionately. He's merely been in the extenuating circumstance. He made a thin, peevish kind of fuss, for instance, when I took the collie-puppies from the farm out for a run the other day. They chased his young broods of speckled Sussex and drove two sitting-hands off their nests besides running all over the flower beds. You know how devoted he is to his poultry and carton. Anyhow, he needn't have gone on about it the entire evening, and then have said, Let's say no more about it, just when I was beginning to enjoy the discussion. That's where one of my petty vindictive revenges came in, added Laura with an unrepentant chuckle. I turned the entire family of speckled Sussex into his seedling shed the day after the puppy episode. How could you? exclaimed Amanda. Oh, it came very easy, said Laura. Two of the hens pretended to be laying at the time, but I was firm. And we thought it was an accident. You see, resumed Laura, I rarely have some grounds for supposing that my next incarnation will be a lower organism. I shall be an animal of some kind. On the other hand, I haven't been a bad sort in my way, so I think I may count on being a nice animal, something elegant and lively with a love of fun, an otter, perhaps. But I can't imagine you as an otter, said Amanda. Well, I don't suppose you can imagine me as an angel if it comes to that, said Laura. Amanda was silent. She couldn't. Personally, I think an otter life would be rather enjoyable, continued Laura, salmon to eat all the year round, and the satisfaction of being able to fetch the trout in their own homes without having to wait for hours till they can't descend it to rise to the fly you've been dangling before them, and an elegant, svelte figure. Think of the otter hens, interposed Amanda. How dreadful to be hunted and harried and finally worried to death! Rather fun, with half the neighbourhood looking on, and anyhow, not worse than this Saturday-to-Tuesday business of dying by inches. Then I should go on into something else. If I'd been a moderately good otter, I suppose I should get back into a human shape of some sort. Probably something rather primitive. A little brown, unclothed Nubian boy, I should think. I wish you would be serious, sighed Amanda. You really ought to be if you're only going to live till Tuesday. As a matter of fact, Laura died on Monday. So dreadfully upsetting, Amanda complained to her uncle-in-law, Sir Lullworth Quain. I've asked a lot of people down for golf and fishing, and the road-edendrons are just looking their best. Laura always was inconsiderate, said Sir Lullworth. She was born during Goodwood week, with an ambassador staying in the house, who hated babies. She had the maddest kind of ideas, said Amanda. Do you know if there was any insanity in her family? Insanity? No, I never heard of any. Her father lives in West Kensington, but I believe he's sane on all other subjects. She had an idea that she was going to be reincarnated as an otter, said Amanda. One meets with those ideas of reincarnation so frequently, even in the West, said Sir Lullworth, that one can hardly set them down as being mad. And Laura was such an unaccountable person in this life that I should not like to lay down definite rules as to what she might be doing in an after-state. You really think she might have passed into some animal form? asked Amanda. She was one of those who shaped their opinions rather readily from the standpoint of those around them. Just then, Egbert entered the breakfast-room, wearing an air of bereavement that Laura's demise would have been insufficient in itself to account for. Four of my speckled Sussex have been killed, he exclaimed. The very four that were to go to the show on Friday, one of them was dragged away and eaten right in the middle of that new carnation bed that I'd been to such trouble and expense over. My best flower bed and my best fowls singled out for destruction. It almost seems as if the brute that did the deed had special knowledge how to be as devastating as possible in a short space of time. Was it a fox, do you think? asked Amanda. Sounds more like a pole-cat, said Solulworth. No, said Egbert. There were marks of webbed feet all over the place, and we followed the tracks down to the stream at the bottom of the garden, evidently an otter. Amanda looked quickly and furtively across at Solulworth. Egbert was too agitated to eat any breakfast and went out to super intend the strengthening of the poultry-yard defences. I think she might at least have waited till the funeral was over, said Amanda, in a scandalised voice. It's her own funeral, you know, said Solulworth. It's a nice point in Etiquette how far one ought to show respect to one's own mortal remains. A disregard for mortuary convention was carried to further lengths next day, during the absence of the family at the funeral ceremony, the remaining survivors of the speckled Sussex were massacred. The marauder's line of retreat seemed to have embraced most of the flower beds on the lawn, but the strawberry beds in the lower garden had also suffered. I shall get the otter-hounds to come here at the earliest possible moment, said Egbert savagely. Oh, no, Count! You can't dream of such a thing, exclaimed Amanda. I mean, it wouldn't do so soon after a funeral in the house. It's a case of necessity, said Egbert. Once an otter takes to that sort of thing, it won't stop. Perhaps it will go elsewhere now that there are no more fowls left, suggested Amanda. One would think you wanted to shield the beast, said Egbert. There's been so little water in the stream lately, objected Amanda. It seems hardly sporting to hunt an animal when it has so little chance of taking refuge anywhere. Good gracious, fumed Egbert. I'm not thinking about sport. I won't have the animal killed as soon as possible. Even Amanda's opposition weakened when during church time on the following Sunday the otter made its way into the house, raided half a salmon from the larder and worried it into scaly fragments on the Persian rug in Egbert's studio. We shall have it hiding under our beds and biting pieces out of our feet before long, said Egbert. And from what Amanda knew of this particular otter she felt that the possibility was not a remote one. On the evening preceding the day fixed for the hunt Amanda spent a solitary hour walking by the banks of the stream making what she's imagined to be hound noises. It was charitably supposed by those who overheard her performance that she was practising for farmyard imitations at the forthcoming village entertainment. It was her friend and neighbour, Aurora Burrett, who brought her news of the day's sport. Pity you weren't out. We had quite a good day. We found it at once, in the pool, just below your garden. Did you? Kill! asked Amanda. Rather! A fine she-otter. Your husband got rather badly bitten in trying to tail it. Poor beast! I felt quite sorry for it. It had such a human look in its eyes when it was killed. You're corny silly, but do you know who the look reminded me of? Oh, my dear woman! What is the matter? When Amanda had recovered to a certain extent from her attack of nervous frustration Egbert took her to the Nile Valley to recuperate. Change of scenes speedily brought about the desired recovery of health and mental balance. The escapades of an adventurous otter in search of a variation of diet were viewed in their proper light. Amanda's normally placid temperament reasserted itself. Even a hurricane of shouted curses coming from her husband's dressing room in her husband's voice, but hardly in his usual vocabulary, failed to disturb her serenity as she made a leisurely toilet one evening in a Cairo hotel. What is the matter? What has happened? She asked in amused curiosity. The little beast has thrown all my clean shirts into the bath. Wait till I cut you, you little! What little beast! asked Amanda, suppressing a desire to laugh. Egbert's language was so hopelessly inadequate to express his outraged feelings. A little beast of a naked, brown, nubian boy! spluttered Egbert. And now Amanda is seriously ill. End of Laura. The Boar Pig From Beasts and Super Beasts by Sarky This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org The Boar Pig by Sarky There is a back way on to the Lord, said Mrs. Filiador Stossen to her daughter, through a small grass paddock and then through a walled fruit garden full of gooseberry bushes. I went all over the place last year when the family were away. There is a door that opens from the fruit garden into a shrubbery and once we emerge from there we can mingle with the guests as if we had come in from the ordinary way. It's much safer than going in by the front entrance and running the risk of coming bang up against the hostess. That would be so awkward when she doesn't happen to have invited us. Isn't it an awful lot of trouble to take forgetting admittance to a garden party? To a garden party, yes. To the garden party of the season, certainly not. Every one of any consequence in the county, with the exception of ourselves, has been asked to meet the princess and it would be far more troublesome to invent explanations as to why we weren't there than to get in by a roundabout way. I stopped Mrs. Covering in the road yesterday and talked very pointedly about the princess. If she didn't choose to take the hint and send me an invitation then it's not my fault, is it? Here we are. We just cut across the grass and threw that little gate into the garden. Mrs. Starson and her daughter suitably arrayed for a county garden party function with an infusion of Almanac de Gotha sailed through the narrow grass paddock and the ensuing gooseberry garden with the air of state barges making an unofficial progress along a rural trout stream. There was a certain amount of furtive haste mingled with the statelyness of their advance as though hostile searchlights might be turned on them at any moment and, as a matter of fact, they were not unobserved. Matilda Covering with the alert eyes of thirteen years and the added advantage of an exalted position in the branches of a medler tree had enjoyed a good view of the Starson flanking movement and had foreseen exactly where it would break down in execution. They'll find the door locked and they'll jolly well have to go back the way they came," she remarked to herself. Serve them right for not coming in by the proper entrance. What a pity Tarquin's super-bus isn't loose in the paddock. After all, as everyone else is enjoying themselves I don't see why Tarquin shouldn't have an afternoon out. But Matilda was of an age where thought is action. She slid down from the branches of the medler tree and, when she clambered back up again, Tarquin, the huge white Yorkshire boar pig, had exchanged the narrow limits of his stye for the wider range of the grass paddock. The discomfited Stossen expedition, returning in recriminatory but otherwise orderly retreat from the unyielding obstacle of the locked door, to a sudden halt at the gate dividing the paddock from the gooseberry garden. What a villainous-looking animal, exclaimed Mrs. Tarquin. It wasn't there when we came in. But there now, anyhow, said her daughter, what on earth are we to do? I wish we'd never come. The boar pig had drawn nearer to the gate for a closer inspection of the human intruders and stood, champing his jaws and blinking his small red eyes in a manner that was doubtless intended to be disconcerting. And, as far as the Stossen's were concerned, thoroughly achieved that result. Shoo! Hish! Hish! Shoo! cried the ladies in chorus. If they think they're going to drive him away by reciting lists of the kings of Israel and Judah, they're laying themselves out for disappointment, observed Matilda from her seat in the medler tree. As she made the observation aloud, Stossen became, for the first time, aware of her presence. A moment or two earlier, she would have been anything but pleased at the discovery that the garden was not as deserted as it looked. But now she hailed the fact of the child's presence on the scene with absolute relief. Little girl, can you find someone to drive away? She began, hopefully. Comment? Comprend pas, was the result. Oh! Are you French? Et fou, Française? Pada, too. Swissong, laser. Then why not talk English? I want to know if— Pemi-timoire explique. You see, I'm rather under a cloud, said Matilda. I'm staying with my aunt, and I was told I must behave particularly well today as lots of people were coming for a garden party, and I was told to imitate Claude, that's my young cousin, who never does anything wrong except by accident and then is always apologetic about it. It seems they thought I ate too much raspberry trifle at lunch, and they said Claude never eats too much raspberry trifle. Well, Claude always goes to sleep for half an hour after lunch because he's told to, and I waited till he was asleep and tied his hands and started forcible feeding with a whole bucketful of raspberry trifle, which they were keeping for the garden party. Lots of it went on to his sailor's suit and some of it on the bed, but a good deal went down Claude's throat, and they can't say again that he has never been known to eat too much raspberry trifle. That's why I'm not allowed to go on to the party. And as an additional punishment, I must speak French all the afternoon. I've had to tell you this in English as there are words like forcible feeding that I don't know the French for. Of course I could have invented them, but if I'd said nourriture obligatoire, you wouldn't have had the faintest idea what I was talking about. Mais maintenant nous parlons français. Oh, very well. Très bien, said Mrs. Dawson reluctantly. In moments of flurry such French as she knew was not under very good control. Là, à l'autre côté de la porte, est un cochon. Un cochon? Ah, le petit charmant, exclaimed Matilda with enthusiasm. Mais non, pas de tout petit et pas de tout charmant. Un bête féroce. Une bête, corrected Matilda. A pig is masculine as long as you call it a pig. But if you lose your temper with it and call it a ferocious beast, it becomes one of us at once. French is a dreadfully unsexing language. Oh, for goodness sake, let's talk English, then, said Mrs. Dawson. Is there any way out of this garden except through the paddock where the pig is? I always go over the wall by way of the plum trees, said Matilda. Dressed as we are, we could hardly do that, said Mrs. Dawson. It was difficult to imagine her doing it in any costume. Do you think you could go and get someone who could drive the pig away? asked Mrs. Dawson. I promised my aunt I would stay here till five o'clock. It's not four yet. I'm sure that under the circumstances your aunt would permit. My conscience would not permit, said Matilda with cold dignity. We can't stay here till five o'clock, exclaimed Mrs. Dawson with growing exasperation. Shall I recite to you to make the time pass quicker? asked Matilda, obligingly. Belinda, the little breadwinner, is considered my best piece, or perhaps it ought to be something in French. Henri Katra's address to his soldiers is the only thing I really know in that language. If you will go and fetch someone to drive that animal away, I will give you something to buy yourself a nice present, said Mrs. Dawson. Matilda came several inches lower down the medallary. That is the most practical suggestion you have made yet for getting out of the garden, she remarked cheerfully. Claude and I are collecting money for the children's fresh air-fund, and we are seeing which of us can collect the biggest sum. I shall be very glad to contribute half a crown. Very glad indeed, said Mrs. Dawson, digging that coin out of the depths of a receptacle which formed a detached outwork of her toilet. Claude is a long way ahead of me at present, continued Matilda, taking no notice of the suggested offering. You see, he is only eleven and has golden hair, and these are enormous advantages when you are on the collecting job. Only the other day, a Russian lady gave him ten shillings. Russians understand the art of giving far better than we do. I expect Claude will net quite twenty-five shillings in this afternoon, he will have the field to himself, and he will be able to do the pale, fragile not long for this world business to perfection after his raspberry trifle experience. Yes, he will be quite two pounds ahead of me by now. With much probing and plucking, and many regretful murmurs, the beleaguered ladies managed to produce seven and six months between them. I am afraid this is all we have got! said Mrs. Dawson. Matilda showed no sign of coming down either to the earth or to their figure. I should not do violence to my conscience for anything less than ten shillings," she announced stiffly. Mother and daughter muttered certain remarks under their breath, in which the word beast was prominent and probably had no reference to Tarquin. I find I have got another half-crown, said Mrs. Dawson, in a shaking voice. Here you are. Now please fetch someone quickly. Matilda slipped down from the tree, took possession of the donation, and proceeded to pick up a handful of overripe meddlers from the grass at her feet. Then she climbed over the gate and addressed herself affectionately to the boar pig. Come, Tarquin, dear old boy, you know you can't resist meddlers when they are rotten and squashy. Tarquin couldn't. By dint of throwing the fruit in front of him at judicious intervals, Matilda decoyed him back to his stye while the delivered captives hurried across the paddock. Well, I never. The little minx exclaimed Mrs. Dawson when she was safely on the high road. The animal wasn't savage at all and as for the ten shillings, I don't believe the Fresh Air Fund will see a penny of it. There she was unwarrantably harsh in her judgment. If you examine the books of the fund you will find the acknowledgement collected by Miss Matilda Covering. Two shillings and sixpence. The Brogue From Beasts and Super Beasts by Sarkie This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org The Brogue by Sarkie. The hunting season had come to an end and the mullets had not succeeded in selling the Brogue. There had been a kind of tradition for the past three or four years, a sort of fatalistic hope that the Brogue would find a purchaser before the hunting was over, but seasons came and went without anything happening to justify such ill-founded optimism. The animal had been named Berserker in the earlier stages of its career. It had been rechristened of the Brogue later on in recognition of the fact that once acquired it was extremely difficult to get rid of. The unkinder wits of the neighbourhood had been known to suggest that the first letter of its name was superfluous. The Brogue had been variously described in sale catalogues as a lightweight hunter, a lady's hack, and more simply but still with a touch of imagination as a useful brown-gelding standing fifteen-one. Toby Mullet had ridden him for four seasons with the West Wessex. You can ride almost any sort of horse with the West Wessex as long as it's an animal that knows the country. The Brogue knew the country intimately, having personally created most of the gaps that were to be met with in banks and hedges for many miles around. His manners and characteristics were not ideal in the hunting field, but he was probably rather safer to ride to Hounds than he was as a hack on country roads. According to the Mullet family he was not really road-shy, but there were one or two objects of dislike that brought on sudden attacks of what Toby called swerving sickness. Motors and cycles he treated with tolerant disregard, but pigs, wheel-barrows, piles of stones by the roadside, perambulators in a village street, gates painted too aggressively white, and sometimes, but not always, the newer kind of beehives turned him aside from his tracks in a vivid imitation of the zigzag course of forked lightning. If a pheasant rose noisily from the other side of a hedgerow the Brogue would spring into the air at the same moment, but this may have been due to a desire to be companionable. The Mullet family contradicted the widely prevalent report that the horse was a confirmed crib-biter. It was about the third week in May that Mrs Mullet, relict of the late Sylvester Mullet and mother of Toby and a bunch of daughters, assailed Clovis Sangrell on the outskirts of the village with a breathless catalogue of local happenings. You know our new neighbour Mr. Penricard, she vociferated, awfully rich, owns ten tin mines in Cornwall, middle-aged and rather quiet. He's taken the red house on a long lease and spent a lot of money on alterations and improvements. Well, Toby sold him the Brogue. Clovis spent a moment or two in assimilating the astonishing news, then he broke into unstinted congratulation. If he had belonged to a more emotional race he would probably have kissed Mrs. Mullet. How wonderful lucky to have pulled it off at last. I know you can buy a decent animal. I've always said that Toby was clever, ever so many congratulations. Don't congratulate me. It's the most unfortunate thing that could have happened," said Mrs. Mullet dramatically. Clovis stared at her in amazement. Mr. Penricard, said Mrs. Mullet, sinking her voice to what she imagined to be an impressive whisper, though it rather resembled a horse-excited squeak, Mr. Penricard has just begun to pay attention to Jessie. Slight at first, but now unmistakable. I was a fool lot to have seen it sooner. Yesterday, at the Rectory Garden Party, he asked her what her favourite flowers were, and she told him carnations, and today a whole stack of carnations has arrived. Clove, and Malmaison, and lovely dark red ones, regular exhibition blooms, and a box of chocolates that he must have got on purpose from London, and he's asked her to go round the links just at this critical moment Toby has sold him that animal. It's a calamity! But you've been trying to get the horse off your hands for years, said Clovis. I've got a house full of daughters, said Mrs. Mullet, and I've been trying, well, not to get them off my hands, of course, but a husband or two wouldn't be a miss among a lot of them. There are six of them, you know. I don't know, said Clovis, I never knew, but I expect you'll write us to the number. Mothers generally know these things. And now, continued Mrs. Mullet in her tragic whisper, when there's a rich husband in prospect imminent on the horizon, Toby sells him that miserable animal. It'll probably kill him if he tries to ride it. Anyway, it'll kill any affection he might have felt towards any member of our family. What is to be done? We can't very well ask to have the horse back. You see, we raised it up like anything when we thought there was a chance of his buying it, and said it was just the animal to suit him. Couldn't you steal it out of his stable and send it to grass at some far miles away, suggested Clovis. Write, votes for women on the stable door, and the thing would pass for a suffragette outrage. No one who knew the horse could possibly suspect you of wanting to get it back again. Every newspaper in the country would ring with the affair, said Mrs. Mullet. Can't you imagine a headline? Valuable hunter stolen by suffragettes, the police would scar the countryside till they found the animal. Well, Jesse must try and get it back from Penricard on the plea that it's an old favourite. Oh, she can say it was only sold because the stable had to be pulled down under the terms of an old repairing lease, and that now it's been arranged that the stable is to stand for a couple of years longer. It sounds a queer proceeding to ask him, said Mrs. Mullet, but something must be done and done at once. The man is not used to horses, and I believe I told him it was as quiet as a lamb. After all, lambs go kicking and twisting about as if they were demented, don't they? The lamb has an entirely unmeditated character for sedateness," agreed Clovis. Jesse came back from the Gulf Lynx next day in a state of mingled elation and concern. It's all right about the proposal, she announced. He came out with it at the sixth hole. I said I must have time to think it over. I accepted him at the seventh. My dear," said her mother, I think a little more maidenly reserve and hesitation would have been advisable, as you've known him so short a time, you might have waited till the ninth hole. The seventh is a very long hole, said Jesse. Besides, the tension was putting us both off our game. By the time we'd got to the ninth hole, we'd settled lots of things. The honeymoon is to be spent in Corsica and perhaps a flying visit to Naples if we feel like it, and a week in London to wind up with. Two of his nieces are to be asked to be bridesmaids, so with our lot there is seven, which is rather a lucky number. You are to wear your pearl grey with any amount of hornet and lace jabbed into it. By the way, he's coming over this evening to ask your consent to the whole affair. So far all's well, but about the brogue it's a different matter. I told him the legend about the stable and how keen we were about buying the horse back. But he seems equally keen on keeping it. He says he must have horse exercise now that he's living in the country, and he's going to start riding tomorrow. He's written a few times in the row on an animal that was accustomed to carry octogenarians and people in undergoing rest cures. It's about all his experience in the saddle. Oh, and he rode a pony once in Norfolk when he was fifteen and the pony twenty-four. And tomorrow he's going to ride the brogue. I shall be a widow before I'm married, and I do so want to see what Corsica's like. Looks so silly on the map. Clovis was sent for in haste, under the developments of the situation put before him. Nobody can ride that animal with any safety, said Mrs. Mullet, except Toby, and he knows by long experience what it's going to shy at and manages to swerve at the same time. I did hint to Mr. Penricard, to Vincent, I should say, that the brogue didn't like white gates, said Jesse. White gates! exclaimed Mrs. Mullet. Did you mention what effect a pig has on him? He'll have to go past Lockyer's farm to get to the high road, and there's sure to be a pig or two grunting about in the lane. He's taken rather a dislike to turkeys lately, said Toby. It's obvious that Penricard mustn't be allowed to go out on that animal, said Clovis, at least not till Jesse has married him and tired of him, I'll tell you what. Ask him to a picnic tomorrow, starting at an early hour. He's not the sort to go out for a ride before breakfast. The day after, I'll get the rector to drive him over to Crowley before lunch to see the new cottage hospital they're building there. The brogue will be standing idle in the stable, and Toby can off to exercise it, and then it can pick up a stone or something of the sort and go conveniently lame. If you hurry on the wedding a bit, the lameness fiction can be kept up till the ceremony is safely over. Mrs. Mullet belonged to an emotional race and she kissed Clovis. It was nobody's fault. That the rain came down in torrents the next morning, making a picnic a fantastic impossibility. It was also nobody's fault, but sheer ill luck that the weather cleared up sufficiently in the afternoon to tempt Mr. Penricard to make his first essay with the brogue. They did not get as far as the pigs at Lockyer's Farm. The rectory gate was painted a dull, unobtrusive green, but it had a very strong, unobtrusive, unobtrusive, unobtrusive green, but it had been white a year or two ago, and the brogue never forgot that he had been in the habit of making a violent curtsy, a backpedal, and a swerve at this particular point of the road. Subsequently, there being apparently no further call on his services, he broke his way into the rectory orchard where he found a hen turkey in a coop. Later visitors to the orchard found the coop almost intact, but very little left of the turkey. Mr. Penricard a little stunned and shaken and suffering from a bruised knee and some minor damages, good-naturedly ascribed the accident to his own inexperience with horses and country roads, and allowed Jesse to nurse him back into complete recovery and gulf fitness within something less than a week. In the list of wedding presents, which the local newspaper published a fortnight or so later, appeared the following item. Brown saddle-horse The Brogue Bridegroom's Gift to Bride which shows, said Toby Mullet, that he knew nothing or else, said Clovis, that he has a very pleasing wit. End of The Brogue The Hen from Beasts and Super Beasts by Sarky This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org The Hen by Sarky Doribit Tholz is coming on Thursday, said Mrs. Sangrel. This next Thursday, asked Clovis, his mother nodded. You've rather done it, haven't you, he chuckled. Jane Martlett has only been here five days and she never stays less than a fortnight even when she's asked definitely for a week. You'll never get her up. Why should I? asked Mrs. Sangrel. She and Dora are good friends, aren't they? They used to be, as far as I remember. They used to be. That's what makes them all the more bitter now. Each feels that she has nursed a viper in her bosom. Nothing fans the flame of human resentment so much as the discovery that one's bosom has been utilised as a snake sanatorium. But what's happened? Has a snake been killed? But what's happened? Has someone been making mischief? Not exactly, said Clovis. A hen came between them. A hen? What hen? It was a bronze leg-horn or some such exotic breed and Dora sold it to Jane at a rather exotic price. They both go in for price poultry, you know, and Jane thought she was going to get her money back in a large family of pedigree chickens. The bird turned out to be an abstainer from the egg-habit and I'm told that the letters which passed between the two women were a revelation as to how much invective could be got onto a sheet of note-paper. How ridiculous, said Mrs. Sangrell. Couldn't some of their friends compose the quarrel? People tried, said Clovis. But it must have been rather like composing the storm music of the flea-gender Hollander. Jane was willing to take back her most libelous remarks if Dora would take back the hen, but Dora said that would be owning herself in the wrong and you know she does soon think of owning slum property in Whitechapel as doing that. It's a most awkward situation, so Mrs. Sangrell. Do you suppose they won't speak to each other? On the contrary, the difficulty will be to get them to leave off. Their remarks on each other's conduct and character have hitherto been governed and only four ounces of plain speaking can be sent through the post for a penny. I can't put Dora off, said Mrs. Sangrell. I've already postponed her visit once and nothing short of a miracle would make Jane leave before herself allotted for tonight is over. Miracles are rather in my line, said Clovis. I don't pretend to be very hopeful in this case, but I'll do my best. As long as you don't drag me into it, stipulated his mother. Servants are a bit of a nuisance, muttered Clovis, as he sat in the smoking-room after lunch, talking fitfully to Jane Martillet in the intervals of putting together the materials of a cocktail, which he had irreverently patented under the name of an Ella Wheeler Wilcox. It was partly compounded of old brandy and partly of curaso. There were other ingredients, but they were never indiscriminately revealed. Servants, a nuisance, exclaimed Jane, banding into the topic with the exuberant plunge of a hunter when he leaves the high road and feels turf under its hooves. I should think they were. The trouble I've had in getting suited this year you'd hardly believe. But I don't see what you have to complain of. Your mother is so wonderfully lucky in her servants. Sturridge, for instance, he's been with you for years, and I'm sure he's a paragon as butlers go. That's just the trouble, said Clovis. It's when servants have been with you for years that they become a really serious nuisance. Look here today. Gone to Morrius, or don't matter. You've simply got to replace them. It's the stares and the paragons that are the real worry. But if they don't give satisfaction, that doesn't prevent them from giving trouble. Now, you were mentioning Sturridge. And it's Sturridge I was particularly thinking of when I made the observation about servants being a nuisance. The excellent Sturridge, a nuisance, I can't believe it. I know he's excellent, and we just couldn't get along without him. He's the one reliable element in this rather haphazard household. But his very orderliness has had an effect on him. Have you ever considered what it must be like to go on unceasingly doing the correct thing in the correct manner in the same surroundings for the greater part of a lifetime? To know and ordain and superintend exactly what silver and glass and tabled in shall be used and set out on what occasions to have cellar and pantry and plate cupboard under a minutely devised and undeviating administration to be noiseless, impalpable, omnipresent, and, as far as your own department is concerned, omniscient? Now you should go mad," said Jane, with conviction. Exactly, said Clovis, thoughtfully, swallowing his completed Ella Wheeler-Wilcox. But Sturridge hasn't gone mad, said Jane, with a flutter of inquiry in her voice. On most points he's thoroughly sane and reliable, said Clovis, but at times he is subject to the most obstinate delusions, and on those occasions he becomes not merely a nuisance, but a decided embarrassment. What sort of delusions? Unfortunately they usually centre round one of the guests of the house-party, and this is where the awkwardness comes in. For instance, he took it into his head that Matilda Sherringham was the prophet Elijah. And as all that he remembered about Elijah's history was the episode of the ravens in the wilderness, he absolutely declined to interfere with what he imagined to be Matilda's private catering arrangements, wouldn't allow any tea to be sent up to her in the morning, and if he was waiting at a table, he passed her over altogether in handing round the dishes. Oh! how very unpleasant! What did you do about it? Oh! Matilda got fed, after a fashion, but it was judged to be best for her to cut her visit short. It was rarely the only thing to be done," said Clovis, with some emphasis. I shouldn't have done that, said Jane. I should have humoured him in some way. I certainly shouldn't have gone away. Clovis frowned. It is not always wise to humour people when they get these ideas into their heads. There's no knowing to what lengths they may go if you encourage them. You don't mean to say he might be dangerous, do you? asked Jane with some anxiety. One can never be certain, said Clovis. Now and then he gets some idea about a guest which might take an unfortunate turn. That is precisely what is worrying me at the present moment. What? has he taken a fancy about someone here now? asked Jane excitedly. How thrilling! Do tell me who it is. You," said Clovis briefly. Me? Clovis nodded. Who on earth does he think I am? Queen Anne, was the unexpected answer. Queen Anne? What an idea! But anyhow, there's nothing dangerous about her. She's such a colourless personality. What does posterity chiefly say about Queen Anne? asked Clovis rather sternly. The only thing that I can remember about her, said Jane, is the saying, Queen Anne's dead. Exactly! said Clovis, staring at the glass that had held the elo wheel of Wilcox. Dead. Do you mean he takes me for the ghost of Queen Anne? asked Jane. Oh, dear, no. No one ever heard of a ghost that came down to breakfast and ate kidneys and toast and honey with a healthy appetite. No, it's the fact, the view being so very much alive and flourishing that perplexes and annoys him. All his life he has been accustomed to look on Queen Anne as the personification of everything that he's dead and done with. As dead as Queen Anne, you know. And now he has to fill your glass at lunch and dinner and listen to your accounts of the gay time you had at the Dublin Horse Show and naturally he feels that something is very wrong with you. But he wouldn't be downright hostile to me on that account, would he? Jane asked anxiously. I didn't really get alarmed about it till lunch to-day, said Clovis. I caught him glowering at you with a very sinister look and muttering, ought to be dead a long time ago, she ought, someone should see to it. That's why I mention the matter to you. This is awful, said Jane. You must be told about it at once. My mother wouldn't hear a word about it, said Clovis earnestly. It would upset her dreadfully. She relies on storage for everything. But he might kill me at any moment, protested Jane. Not at any moment. He's busy with the silver all the afternoon. You'll have to keep a sharp look out all the time and be on your guard to frustrate any murderous attack, said Jane. Adding in a tone of weak obstinacy, it's a dreadful situation to be in with a mad butler dangling over you like the sort of what's his name, but I'm certainly not going to cut my visit short." Clovis swore horribly under his breath. The miracle was an obvious misfire. It was in the hall the next morning, after a late breakfast, that Clovis had his final inspiration as he stood engaged in coaxing rust spots from an old putter. Where's Miss Martlet? He asked the butler who was at that moment crossing the hall. Writing letters in the morning-room, sir, said storage announcing a fact of which his questioner was already aware. She wants to copy the inscription on that old basket-hilted sabre, said Clovis, pointing to a venerable weapon hanging on the wall. I wish you'd take it to her. My hands are all over oil. Take it without the sheath. It'll be less trouble." The butler drew the blade, still keen and bright in its well-cared for old age, and carried it into the morning-room. There was a door near the writing-table leading to a back-stairway. Jane vanished through it with such lightning rapidity that the butler doubted whether she had seen him come in. Half an hour later Clovis was driving her and her hastily packed luggage to the station. Mother will be awfully vexed when she comes back from her ride and finds you've gone, he observed to the departing guest. But I'll make up some story about an urgent wire having called you away. It wouldn't do to alarm her unnecessarily about storage. Jane sniffed slightly at Clovis's ideas of unnecessary alarm and was almost rude to the young man who came round with thoughtful enquiries as to luncheon baskets. The miracle lost some of its usefulness from the fact that Dora wrote the same day postponing the date of her visit, but at any rate Clovis holds the record as the only human being who ever hustled Jane Martlet out of the timetable of her migrations. End of the Hen The Open Window From Beasts and Superbeasts by Sarky This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org The Open Window by Sarky My aunt will be down presently, Mr. Nuttle, said a very self-possessed young lady of fifteen. In the meantime, you must try and put up with me. Frampton Nuttle endeavoured to say the correct something, which should duly flatter the niece of the moment without unduly discounting the aunt that was to come. Privately he doubted more than ever whether these formal visits on a succession of total strangers would do much towards helping the nerve cure which he was supposed to be undergoing. I know how it will be," his sister had said when he was preparing to migrate to this rural retreat. You will bury yourself down there and not speak to a living soul and your nerves will be worse than ever from moping. I shall just give you letters of introduction to all the people I know there. Some of them, as far as I can remember, were quite nice. Frampton wondered whether Mrs. Sappleton, the lady to whom he was presenting one of the letters of introduction, came into the nice division. Do you know many of the people round here? asked the niece when she judged that they had had sufficient silent communion. Hardly a soul, said Frampton. My sister was staying here at the rectory. Some four years ago and she gave me letters of introduction to some of the people here. He made the last statement in a tone of distinct regret. Then you know practically nothing about my aunt, pursued the self-possessed young lady. Only her name and address, admitted the caller, he was wondering whether Mrs. Sappleton was in the married or widowed state. An undefinable something about the room seemed to suggest masculine habitation. Her great tragedy happened just three years ago, said the child. That would be since your sister's time. Her tragedy, asked Frampton, somehow in this restful country spot tragedies seemed out of place. You may wonder why we keep that window wide open on an October afternoon, said the niece, indicating a large French window that opened onto a lawn. It is quite warm for the time of year, said Frampton, but has that window got anything to do with the tragedy? Out through that window, three years ago to a day, her husband and her two young brothers went off for their day's shooting. They never came back. In crossing the moor to their favourite snipe-shooting ground they were all three and gulfed in a treacherous piece of bog. It had been that dreadful wet summer, you know, and places that were safe in other years gave way suddenly without warning. Their bodies were never recovered. That was the dreadful part of it. And here the child's voice lost its self-possessed note and became faltering the human. Poor aunt always thinks that they will come back some day. They and the little brown spaniel that was lost with them and walk in at that window just as they used to. That's why the window is kept open every evening till it is quite dusk. Poor dear aunt. She has often told me how they went out. Her husband with his white waterproof coat over his arm and Ronnie, her youngest brother, singing Bertie, Why Do You Bound, as he always did to tease her, because she said it got on her nerves. Do you know, sometimes on still quiet evenings like this, I almost get a creepy feeling that they will all walk in through that window. She broke off with a little shudder. It was a relief to Frampton when the aunt bustled into the room with a whirl of apologies for being late in making her appearance. I hope Vera has been amusing you, she said. She's been very interesting, said Frampton. I hope you don't mind the open window, said Mrs. Appleton-Briskley. My husband and brothers will be home directly from shooting, and they always come in this way. They've been out for snipe in the marshes today, so they'll make a fine mess over my poor carpets. So like you, men-folk, isn't it? She rattled on cheerfully about the shooting and the scarcity of birds and the prospects for dark in the winter. To Frampton it was all purely horrible. He made a desperate but only partially successful effort to turn the talk on to a less ghastly topic. He was conscious that his hostess was giving him only a fragment for attention, and her eyes were constantly straying past him to the open window in the lawn beyond. It was certainly an unfortunate coincidence that he should have paid his visit on this tragic anniversary. The doctors agree, in ordering me complete rest, an absence of mental excitement, and avoidance of anything in the nature of violent physical exercise, announced Frampton, who laboured under the tolerably widespread delusion that total strangers and chance acquaintances are hungry for the least detail of one's ailments and infirmities, their cause, and cure. On the matter of diet, they are not so much in agreement, he continued. No, said Mrs. Appleton, in a voice which only replaced a yawn at the last moment. Then she suddenly brightened into alert attention, but not to what Frampton was saying. Here they are at last, she cried, just in time for tea, and don't they look as if they were muddy up to the eyes? Frampton shivered slightly and turned towards the niece with a look intended to convey sympathetic comprehension. The child was staring out through the open window, with dazed horror in her eyes. In a chill shock of nameless fear, Frampton swung round in his seat and looked in the same direction. In the deepening twilight three figures were walking across the lawn towards the window. They all carried guns under their arms, and one of them was additionally burdened with a white coat hung over his shoulders. A tired brown spaniel kept close at their heels. Noiselessly they neared the house, and then a horse-young voice chanted out of the dusk, I said, Bertie, why do you bound? Frampton grabbed wildly at his stick and hat, the hall door, the gravel drive, and the front gate were dimly noted stages in his head-long retreat. A cyclist, coming along the road, had to run into the hedge to avoid imminent collision. Here we are, my dear," said the bearer of the white Macintosh coming in through the window. Fairly muddy, most of its dry. Who was that who bolted out as we came up? An extraordinary man! A Mr. Nuttle, said Mrs. Appleton, could only talk about his illnesses off without a word of good-bye or apology when you arrived. One would think he'd seen a ghost. I expected was the spaniel," said the niece calmly. He told me he had a horror of dogs. He was once hunted into a cemetery somewhere on the banks of the Ganges by a pack of pariah dogs, and had to spend the night in a newly dug grave with the creature snarling and grinning and foaming just above him, enough to make anyone lose their nerve. The mance, at short notice, was her speciality. End of the open window. Three and a quarter centuries had passed since the day when it had taken the high seas as an important unit of a fighting squadron. Precisely which squadron, the learned, were not agreed. The galleon had brought nothing into the world, but it had, according to tradition and report, taken much out of it. But how much? There again the learned were in disagreement. Some were as generous as others, as an income tax assessor, others applied a species of higher criticism to the submerged treasure chests and debased their contents to the currency of goblin gold. Of the former school was Lulu, Duchess of Dalverton. The Duchess was not only a believer in the existence of a sunken treasure of alluring proportions. She also believed that she knew of a man by which the said treasure might be precisely located and cheaply disembedded. An aunt, on her mother's side of the family, had been made of honor to the Count of Monaco and had taken a respectful interest in the deep sea researches in which the throne of that country, impatient perhaps of its territorial restrictions, was went to immerse itself. It was then that the treasure it was through the instrumentality of this relative that the Duchess learned of an invention, perfected and very nearly patented by a monogascan savant, by means of which the home life of the Mediterranean sardine might be studied at a depth of many fathoms in a cold white light of more than ballroom brilliancy. Implicated in this invention and in the Duchess's eyes the most attractive part of it was an electric suction dredge, specially designed for dragging to the surface such objects of interest and value as might be found in the more accessible levels of the ocean bed. The rights of the invention were to be acquired for a matter of eighteen hundred francs and the apparatus for a few thousand more. The Duchess of Dolberton was rich, as the world counted wealth. She nursed the hope of being one day rich at her own computation. Companies had been formed and efforts had been made again and again during the course of three centuries to probe for the alleged treasures of the interesting galleon. And with the aid of this invention she considered that she might go to work on the wreck privately and independently. After all, one of her ancestors on her mother's side was descended from Medina Sidonia so she was of the opinion that she had the right to the treasure as any one. She acquired the invention and bought the apparatus. Among other family ties and encumbrances Lulu possessed a nephew, Vasco Honiton, a young gentleman who was blessed with a small income and a large circle of relatives and lived impartially and precariously upon both. The name Vasco had been given him in the hope that he might live up to its adventurer's tradition but he limited himself strictly to the home industry of adventurer preferring to exploit the assured rather than to explore the unknown. Lulu's intercourse with him had been restricted of recent years to the negative processes of being out of time when he called on her and short of money when he wrote to her. Now, however, she bethought herself of his eminent suitability for the direction of a treasure-seeking experiment. If anyone could extract gold from an unpromising situation it would certainly be Vasco. Of course, under the necessary safeguards in the way of supervision, where money was in question Vasco's conscience was liable to fits of obstinate silence. Somewhere on the west coast of Ireland the dulvet and property included a few acres of shingle rock and heather, too barren to support even an agrarian outrage, but embracing a small and fairly deep bay where the lobster yield was good in most seasons. There was a bleak little house on the property, and for those who liked lobsters and solitude and were able to accept an Irish cook's ideas as to what might be perpetrated in the name of mayonnaise Inisklutha was a tolerable exile during the summer months. Lulu Seldom went there herself but she lent the house lavishly to friends and relations. She put it now at Vasco's disposal. It will be the very place to practice and experiment with the salvage apparatus, she said. The bay is quite deep in places and you will be able to test everything thoroughly before starting on the treasure hunt. In less than three weeks Vasco turned up in town to report progress. The apparatus works beautifully, informed his aunt. The deeper one got the clearer everything grew. We find something in the way of a sunken wreck to operate on, too. A wreck? Inisklutha Bay, exclaimed Lulu. A submerged motorboat. The Sabrosa, said Vasco. No, really, said Lulu. Poor Billy Guttley's boat. I remember it went down somewhere off that coast some three years ago. His body was washed ashore at the point. People said at the time that the boat was capsized intentionally. A case of suicide, you know. People always say that sort of thing when anything tragic happens. In this case they were right, said Vasco. What do you mean? asked the Duchess hurriedly. What makes you think so? I know so, said Vasco simply. No? How can you know? How can anyone know? The thing happened three years ago. In a locker of the Sabrosa I found a watertight strongbox. It contained papers. Vasco paused with dramatic effect and searched for a moment in the inner breast pocket of his coat. He drew out a folded slip of paper. The Duchess snatched it in almost indecent haste and moved appreciably nearer at the fireplace. What's this in the Sabrosa's strongbox? She asked. Oh, no, said Vasco carelessly. That is a strongbox. That is a strongbox. Carelessly. That is a list of the well-known people who would be involved in a very disagreeable scandal if the Sabrosa's papers were made public. I've put you at the head of it, otherwise it follows alphabetical order. The Duchess gazed helplessly at the string of names which seemed for the moment to include nearly everyone she knew. As a matter of fact her own name at the head of the list exercised an almost paralyzing effect on her thinking faculties. Of course you have destroyed the papers, she asked, when she had somewhat recovered herself. She was conscious that she made the remark with an entire lack of conviction. Vasco shook his head. But you should have, said Lulu angrily. If, as you say, they are highly compromising. Oh, they are. I assure you of that, interpose the young man. Then you should put them out of harm's way at once. Supposing anything should leak out, think of all those poor, unfortunate people who would be involved in the disclosures. And Lulu tapped the list with an agitated gesture. Unfortunate, perhaps, but not poor, corrected Vasco. If you read the list carefully you'll notice that I haven't troubled to include anyone whose financial standing isn't above question. Lulu glared at her nephew for some moments in silence. Then she asked hoarsely, What are you going to do? Nothing. For the remainder of my life, he answered meaningly, a little hunting perhaps, he continued, and I shall have a villa at Florence. The villa sub-roser would sound rather quaint and picturesque, don't you think? The thought of people would be able to attach a meaning to the name. And I suppose I must have a hobby. I shall probably collect ray-burns. Lulu's relative, who lived at the court of Monaco, got quite a snappish answer when she wrote recommending some further invention in the realm of marine research. End of The Treasureship. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Farmhouse Kitchen probably stood where it did as a matter of accident or haphazard choice, yet its situation might have been planned by a master strategist in farmhouse architecture, dairy and poultry yard and herb garden, and all the busy places of the farm seemed to lead by easy access into its wide flagged haven, where there was room for everything and where muddy boots left traces that were easily swept away. And yet, for all that it stood so well in the center of human bustle, its long, lattice window with wide window seat built into an embrasure beyond the huge fireplace, looked out on a wild spreading view of hill and heather and wooded comb. The window nook made almost a little room in itself, quite the pleasantest room in the farm as far as situation and capabilities went. Young Mrs. Ladbrook, whose husband had just come into the farm by way of inheritance, cast covetous eyes on this snug corner and her fingers itched to make it bright and cozy with chintz curtains and bowls of flowers and a shelf or two of old China. The musty farm parlor, looking out onto a prim, cheerless garden, imprisoned within high blank walls, was not a room that lent itself readily either to comfort or decoration. When we are more settled, I shall work wonders in the way of making the kitchen habitable," said the young woman to her occasional visitors. There was an unspoken wish in those words, a wish which was unconfessed as well as unspoken. Emma Ladbrook was the mistress of the farm. Jointly with her husband she might have her say and, to a certain extent, her way in ordering its affairs. But she was not mistress of the kitchen. On one of the shells of an old dresser, in company with chipped sauce-boats, pewter jugs, cheese-graders, and paid bills, rested a worn and ragged Bible on whose front page was the record in faded ink of a baptism dated ninety-four years ago. Martha Crale was the name written on that yellow page. The yellow-wrinkled old dame who hobbled and muttered about the kitchen, looking like a dead autumn leaf which the winter winds still pushed hither and thither, had once been Martha Crale. For seventy odd years she had been Martha Mountjoy. For longer than anyone could remember, she had patterned to and fro between oven and wash-house and dairy and out to chicken-run and garden, grumbling and muttering and but working unceasingly. Emma Ladbrook, of whose coming she took as little notice as she would of a bee wandering in at a window on a summer's day, used at first to watch her with a kind of frightened curiosity. She was so old and so much a part of the place it was difficult to think of her exactly as a living thing. Old Shep, the white nozzle that stiff-limbed Collie, waiting for his time to die, seemed almost more human than the withered, dried-up old woman. He had been a riotous, roistering puppy mad with the joy of life when she was already a tottering, hobbling dame. Now he was just a blind, breathing carcass, nothing more. And she still worked with frail energy, still swept and baked and washed, fetched and carried. If there was something in these wise old dogs that did not perish utterly with death, Emma used to think to herself, what generations of ghost-dogs there must be out on those hills, that Martha had reared and fed and tended and spoken a last goodbye word to in that old kitchen. And what memory she must have of human generations that had passed away in her time. It was difficult for anyone, let alone a stranger like Emma, to get her to talk of the days that had been. Her shrill, quavering speech was of doors that had been left unfastened, pales that had got mislaid, calves whose feeding-time was overdue, and the various little faults and lapses that checker a farmhouse routine. Now and again when election-time came round, she would unstore her recollections of the old names round which the fight had waged in the days gone by. There had been a Palmerston that had been a named-down Tiferton way. Tiferton was not a far journey as the crow flies, but to Martha it was almost a foreign country. Later there had been Northcoats and Aklans and many other newer names that she had forgotten. The names changed, but it was always liberals and Tories, yellows and blues, and they always quarreled and shouted as to who was right and who was wrong. The one they quarreled about most was a fine old gentleman with an angry face. She had seen his picture on the walls. She had seen it on the floor, too, with a rotten apple squashed over it, and the farm had changed its politics from time to time. Martha had never been on one side or the other. None of they had ever done the farm a stroke of good. Such was her sweeping verdict given with all a peasant's distress of the outside world. When the half-frightened curiosity had somewhat faded away, Emma Ladbrick was uncomfortably conscious of another feeling towards the old woman. She was a quaint old tradition, lingering about the place. She was part and parcel of the farm itself. She was something at once pathetic and picturesque, but she was dreadfully in the way. Emma had come to the farm full of plans for little reforms and improvements, in part the result of training in the newest ways and methods, in part the outcome of her own ideas and fancies. Reforms in the kitchen region, if those deaf old ears could have been induced to give them even a hearing, would have met with short, shrift and scornful rejection and the kitchen region spread over the zone of dairy and market business and half the work of the household. Emma, with the latest science of dead poultry dressing at her fingertips, sat by an unheated watcher, while old Martha trust the chickens for the market stall as she had trust them for nearly four score years. All leg and no breast. And the hundred hints, an effective cleaning and labor lightning and the things that make for wholesomeness which the young woman was ready to impart or to put into action, dropped away into nothingness before that one muttering, unheating presence. Above all, the coveted window corner that was to be a dainty, cheerful oasis in the gaunt old kitchen stood now choked and lumbered with the litter of odds and ends that Emma, for all her nominal authority would not have dared or dared to displace. Over them seemed to be spun the protection of something that was like a human cobweb. Decidedly Martha was in the way. It would have been an unworthy meanness to have wished to see the span of that brave old life shortened by a few poultry months, but as the days sped by Emma was conscious that the wish was there, disowned though it might be, lurking at the back of her mind. She felt the meanness of the wish come over her with a qualm of self-reproach one day when she came into the kitchen and found an unaccustomed state of things in that usually busy quarter. Old Martha was not working. A basket of corn was on the floor by her side, and out in the yard the poultry were beginning to clamor a protest of overdue feeding time. But Martha sat huddled in a shrunken bench on the window seat, looking out with her dim old eyes as though she saw something stranger than the autumn landscape. Is anything the matter, Martha? asked the young woman. "'Tis death! Tis death coming!' answered the quavering boys. "'I knew, Twerk, coming! I knew it! Twernt for nothing that old Shep's been howlin' all morning, and last night I heard the screech howl to give the death cry. And there was something white as run across the yard yesterday. Twernt a cat nor a stote. Twer something the fowls knew Twer something they all drew off to one side. Aye, there has been warnant. I knew it were a coming!' The young woman's eyes clouded with pity. The old thing sitting there so white and shrunken had once been a merry, noisy child playing about in lanes and haylofts and farmhouse garrets. That had been 80 odd years ago, and now she was just a frail old body cowering under the approaching chill of the death that was coming at last to take her. It was not probable that much could be done for her, but Emma hastened away to get assistance in council. Her husband, she knew, was down at a tree-felling some little distance off, but she might find some other intelligent soul who knew the old woman better than she did. The farm, she soon found out, had that faculty common to farmyards of swallowing up and losing its human population. The poultry followed her in interested action and swine grunted interrogations at her from behind the bars of their sties, but barnyard and rickyard orchard and stables and dairy gave no reward to her search. Then, as she retraced her steps towards the kitchen, she came subtly on her cousin, young Mr. Jim, as everyone called him, who divided his time between amateur horse-dealing, rabbit-shooting, and flirting with the farm-maids. I'm afraid old Martha is dying, said Emma. Jim was not the sort of person to whom one had to break news gently. Nonsense, he said. Martha means to live to a hundred. She told me so and she'll do it. She may be actually dying at this moment, or it may just be the beginning of the breakup, persisted Emma, with a feeling of contempt for the slowness and dullness of the young man. A grin spread over his good-natured features. It don't look like it, he said, nodding towards the yard. Emma turned to catch the meaning of his remark. Old Martha stood in the middle of a mob of poultry scattering handfuls of grain around her. The turkey-cock with the bronze chain of his feathers and the purple-red of his wattles. The game-cock with the glowing metallic luster of his eastern plumage. The hens with their ochres and buffs and umbers and their scarlet combs. And the drakes with their bottle-green heads made a medley of rich colour in the centre of which the old woman looked like a withered stalk standing amid a riotous growth of gaily-hued flowers. But she threw the grain deftly amid the wilderness of beaks, and her quivering voice carried as far as the two people who were watching her. She was still harping on the theme of death coming to the farm. I knew it were coming! There's been signs and warnings. Who's dead, then, old mother? Called out the young man. He's young, Mr. Ladbrook! She shrilled back. They've just carried his body in, run out of the way of a tree that was coming down and ran, hit a cell onto an iron post. Dead when they picked it up. I knew it were coming! And she turned to fling a handful of barley at a belated group of guinea fowl that came racing toward her. The farm was a family property, and passed to the rabbit-shooting cousin as the next of kin. Emma Ladbrook drifted out of its history as a bee that had wandered in at an open window might flit its way out again. On a cold gray morning she stood waiting, with her boxes already stowed in the farm cart till the last of the market produce should be ready, for the train she was to catch was of less importance than the chickens and butter and eggs that were to be offered for sale. From where she stood she could see an angle of the long, lattice window that was to have been cozy with bowls of flowers. Into her mind came the thought that for months, perhaps for years, long after she had been utterly forgotten, a white unheating face would be seen peering out through those lattice panes, and a weak muttering voice would be heard quivering up and down those flight passages. She made her way to a narrow barred casement that opened into the farm larder. Old Martha was standing at a table, trusting a pair of chickens for the market stall as she had trust them for nearly four score years. End of The Cobb Web Recording by Justin Barrett The Lull from Beasts and Super Beasts by Sarky This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org The Lull by Sarky I've asked Latimer Springfield to spend Sunday with us and stop the night. Announced to Mrs. Dermot at the breakfast table. I thought he was in the throes of an election, remarked her husband. Exactly! The pole is on Wednesday, and the poor man will have worked himself to a shadow by that time. Imagine what electioneering must be like in this awful soaking rain going along slushy country roads and speaking to damp audiences in drafty school rooms day after day for a fortnight. He'll have to put in an appearance at some place of worship on Sunday morning, and he can come to us immediately afterwards and have a thorough respite from everything connected with politics. I won't let him even think of them. I've had the picture of Cromwell dissolving the Long Parliament taken down from the staircase, and even the portrait of Lord Rosemary's ladders removed from the smoking-room. And Vera, added Mrs. Dermot, turning to her sixteen-year-old niece, be careful what colour ribbon you wear in your hair. Not blue or yellow on any account, those other rival party colours, and emerald green or orange would be almost as bad with this home-rule business to the fore. On state occasions I always wear a black ribbon in my hair, said Vera, with crushing dignity. Latimer Springfield was a rather cheerless, oldish young man, who went into politics somewhat in the spirit in which other people might go into half-morning. Without being an enthusiast, however, he was a fairly strenuous plodder, and Mrs. Dermot had been reasonably near the mark in asserting that he was working at high pressure over this election. The restful lull which his hostess enforced on him was decidedly welcome, and yet the nervous excitement of the contest had too great a hold on him to be totally banished. I know he's going to sit up half the night, working up points for his final speeches," said Mrs. Dermot regretfully. However, we've kept politics at arm's length all the afternoon and evening. More than that, we cannot do. That remains to be seen," said Vera. But she said it herself. Latimer had scarcely shut his bedroom door before he was immersed in a sheaf of notes and pamphlets, while a fountain pen and pocketbook were brought into play for the new marshalling of useful facts and discreet fictions. He had been at work for perhaps thirty-five minutes, and the house was seemingly consecrated to the healthy slumber of country life, when a stifled squealing and scuffling in the passage was followed by a loud tap at his door. Before he had time to answer, a much-encumbered Vera burst into the room with the question, I say, can I leave these here? These were a small black pig and a lusty specimen of black-red game-cock. Latimer was moderately fond of animals and particularly interested in small livestock rearing from the economic point of view. In fact, one of the pamphlets on which he was at that moment engaged warmly advocated the further development of the pig and poultry industry in our rural districts. But he was pardonably unwilling to share even a commodious bedroom with samples of henroost and sty products. Wouldn't they be happier somewhere outside, he asked, tactfully expressing his own preference in the matter in an apparent solicitude for theirs. There is no outside, said Vera impressively. Nothing but a waste of dark swirling waters, the reservoir at Brinkley has burst. I didn't know there was a reservoir at Brinkley, said Latimer. Well, there isn't now. It's jolly well all over the place, and as we stand particularly low, where the centre of an inland sea just at present, you see the river has overflowed its banks as well. Good gracious! Have any lives been lost? Heaps, I should say. The second housemaid has already identified three bodies that have floated past the billiard room as being the young man she's engaged to. A large assortment of the population round here or else she's very careless at identification. Of course it could be the same body coming round again and again in a swirl. I hadn't thought of that. But we ought to go out and do rescue work, oughtn't we? said Latimer with the instinct of a parliamentary candidate for getting into the local limelight. We can't, said Vera decidedly. We haven't any boats, and we're cut off by a raging torrent from any human habitation. My aunt particularly hoped you would keep to your room and not add to the confusion, but she thought it would be so kind of you if you would take in Hartlepool's Wonder, the Gamecock you know for the night. You see, there are eight other Gamecocks and they fight like furies if they get together, so we're putting one in each bedroom. The foul houses are all flooded out, don't you know? And then I thought perhaps you wouldn't mind taking in this wee piggy. He's rather a little love, but he has a vile temper. He gets that from his mother. Not that I like to say things against her when she's lying dead and drowned in her stipe or thing. What she really wants is a man's firm hand to keep him in order. I'd try and grapple with him myself. Only I've got my chow in my room, you know, and he goes for pigs wherever he finds them. Couldn't the pig go in the bathroom? Asked Latimer faintly, wishing that he had taken up his determined to stand on the subject of bedroom swine as the chow had. The bathroom? Viral laugh, shrilly. It'll be full of Boy Scouts till morning if the hot water holds out. Boy Scouts? Yes, thirty of them came to rescue us while the water was only waist high. Then it rose another three feet or so and we had to rescue them. We're giving them hot baths in daches and drying their clothes in the hot-air cupboard, but of course drenched clothes don't dry in a minute and the corridor and staircase are beginning to look like a bit of coast scenery and overcoat. I hope you don't mind. It's a new overcoat," said Latimer with every indication of binding dreadfully. You'll take every care of Hartlepool's wonder, won't you? said Viral. His mother took three firsts at Birmingham and he was second in the Cockrell class last year at Gloucester. He'll probably roost on the rail at the bottom of your bed. I wonder if he'd feel more at home if some of his wives were up here with him. The hens are all in the pantry and I think I could pick out Hartlepool Helen. She's his favourite. Latimer showed a belated firmness on the subject of Hartlepool Helen and Viral withdrew without pressing the point, having first settled the game-cock on his extemporised perch and taken an affectionate farewell of the pigling. Latimer undressed and got into bed with all due speed, judging that the pig would abate its inquisitorial restlessness once the light was turned out. As a substitute for a cosy, straw-bedded stye, the room offered, at first inspection, few attractions, but the disconsolate animal suddenly discovered an appliance in which the most luxuriously contrived pig arrays were notably deficient. The sharp edge of the underneath part of the bed was pitched at exactly the right elevation to permit the pigling to scrape himself ecstatically backwards and forwards with an artistic humping of the back at the crucial moment and an accompanying gurgle of long-drawn delight. The game-cock, who may have fancied that he was being rocked in the branches of a pine tree, bore the motion with a greater fortitude than Latimer was able to command. A series of slaps directed at the pig's body were accepted more as an additional and pleasing irritant than as a criticism of conduct or a hint to desist, evidently something more than a man's firm hand was needed to deal with the case. Latimer slipped out of bed in search of a weapon of dissuasion. There was sufficient light in the room to enable the pig to detect this manoeuvre and the vile temper inherited from the drowned mother for unful play. Latimer bounded back into bed and his conqueror, after a few threatening snorts and champing of his jaws, massaged operations with renewed zeal. During the long, wakeful hours which ensued, Latimer tried to distract his mind from his own immediate troubles by dwelling with decent sympathy on the second housemaid's bereavement, but he found himself more often wondering how many Boyskites were sharing his melton overcoat. The role of St. Martin, Malgré-Louis was not one which appealed to him. Towards dawn the piggling fell into a happy slumber, and Latimer might have followed its example, but at about the same time Stupor-Hutt-LePouli gave a rousing crow, clattered down to the floor, and forthwith commenced a spirited combat with his reflection in the wardrobe mirror. Remembering that the bird was more or less under his care, Latimer performed haig tribunal offices by draping a bath-towl over the provocative mirror, during peace was local and short-lived. The deflected energies of the Gamecock found a new outlet in a sudden and sustained attack on the sleeping and temporarily inoffensive piggling, and the duel which followed was desperate and embittered beyond any possibility of effective intervention. The feathered combatant had the advantage of being able when hard pressed to take refuge on the bed, and freely availed himself of this circumstance. The piggling never quite succeeded in hurling himself on to the same eminence, but it wasn't for want of trying. Neither side could claim any decisive success, and the struggle had been practically fought to a stand still by the time the maid arrived with the early morning tea. "'Law, sir,' she exclaimed in undisguised astonishment, "'do you want those animals in your room?' "'Want!' the piggling, as though aware it might have outstayed its welcome dashed out at the door, and the Gamecock followed it at a more dignified pace. "'If Miss Vera's dog sees that pig,' exclaimed the maid and hurried off to avert such a catastrophe.' A cold suspicion was stealing over Latimer's mind. He went to the window and drew up the blind. A light drizzling rain was falling, but there was not the faintest trace of any inundation. Some half-hour later he met Vera on the way to the breakfast-room. "'I should not like to think of you as a deliberate liar,' he observed coldly. "'But one occasionally has to do things one does not like.' "'At any rate, I kept your mind from dwelling on politics all the night,' said Vera, which was, of course, perfectly trill, and of the lull.' The Unkindest Blow From Beasts and Superbeasts, by Sarkie. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Unkindest Blow by Sarkie. The season of strikes seemed to have run itself to a stand still, almost every trade and industry and calling in which a dislocation could possibly be engineered had indulged in that luxury. Of the last and least successful convulsion had been the strike of the World's Union of Zoological Garden Attendants, who, pending settlement of certain demands, refused to minister further to the wants of the animals committed to their charge, or to allow other keepers to take their place. In this case, the threat of the Zoological Garden's approach is that if the men came out, the animals should come out also, had intensified and precipitated the crisis. The imminent prospect of the larger carnivores to say nothing of rhinoceroses and bull bison, roaming at large and unfed in the heart of London, was not one which permitted of prolonged conferences. The Government of the Day, which, from its tendency to be a few hours behind the course of events, had been nicknamed last afternoon, was obliged to intervene with promptitude and decision. A strong force of blue jackets was dispatched to Regent's Park to take over the temporarily abandoned duties of the strikers. Blue jackets were chosen in preference to land forces, partly on account of the traditional readiness of the British navy to go anywhere and do anything, partly by reason of the familiarity of the average sailor with monkeys, parrots, and other tropical fauna, but chiefly at the urgent request of the First Lord of the Admiralty, who was keenly desirous of an opportunity for performing some personal act of unobtrusive public service within the province of his department. If he insists on feeding the infant Jaguar himself in defiance of its mother's wishes, there may be another by-election in the North, said one of his colleagues with a hopeful inflection in his voice. My elections are not very desirable at present, but we must not be selfish. As a matter of fact, the strike collapsed peacefully without any outside intervention. The majority of the keepers had become so attached to their charges that they returned to work of their own accord. And then the nation and the newspapers turned with a sense of relief to happier things. It seemed as if a new era of contentment was about to dawn. Everybody had struck who could possibly want to strike, or who could possibly be cajoled or bullied into striking whether they wanted to or not. The lighter and brighter side of life might now claim some attention, and conspicuous among the other topics that sprang into sudden prominence was the pending Falvatun divorce suit. The duke of Falvatun was one of those human order of that stimulate the public appetite for sensation without giving it much to feed on. As a mere child he had been precociously brilliant. He had declined the editorship of the Anglian review at an age when most boys are content to have declined Mensa, a table, and though he could not claim to have originated the futurist movement in literature, his letters to a possible grandson written at the age of fourteen had attracted considerable notice. In later days his brilliancy had been less conspicuously displayed. During a debate in the House of Lords on affairs in Morocco, at a moment when that country for the fifth time in seven years had brought half Europe to the verge of war, he had interpolated the remark, a little more, and how much it is. But in spite of the encouraging reception accorded to this one political utterance he was never tempted to further display in that direction. It began to be generally understood that he did not intend to supplement his numerous town and country residences by living over much in the public eye. And then had come the unlooked-for tidings of the imminent proceedings for divorce. And such a divorce there were cross-soups and allegations and counter-allegations, charges of cruelty and desertion, everything in fact that was necessary to make the case one of the most complicated and sensational of its kind. And the number of distinguished people involved or cited as witnesses not only embraced both political parties in the realm and several colonial governors, but included an exotic contingent from France, Hungary, the United States of North America, and the Grand Duchy of Barden. Hotel accommodation of the most expensive sort began to raise a strain on its resources. It will be quite like the derba without the elephants, exclaimed an enthusiastic lady who, to do her justice, had never seen a derba. The general feeling was one of thankfulness that the last of the strikes had been got over before the date fixed for the hearing of the great suit. As a reaction from the season of gloom and industrial strife that had just passed away, the agencies that purvey and stage-managed sensations laid themselves out to do their level best on this momentous occasion. Men who had made their reputations as special descriptive writers were mobilized from distant corners of Europe and the further side of the Atlantic in order to enrich with their pens the daily printed records of the case. One word-painter who specialized in descriptions of how witnesses turned pale under cross-examination was summoned hurriedly back from a famous and prolonged murder trial in Sicily, where indeed his talents were being decidedly wasted. Thumbnail artists and expert Kodak manipulators were retained at extravagant salaries and special dress reporters were in high demand. An enterprising Paris firm of costume builders presented the defendant Duchess with three special creations to be worn, marked, learned and extensively reported at various critical stages of the trial and, as for the cinematograph agents, their industry and persistence was untiring. Films representing the Duke saying goodbye to his favorite canary on the eve of the trial were in readiness weeks before the event was due to take place. Other films depicted the Duchess holding imaginary consultations with fictitious lawyers or making a light repast of specially advertised vegetarian sandwiches during a supposed luncheon interval. As far as human foresight and human enterprise could go, nothing was lacking to make the trial a success. Two days before the case was down for hearing, the advance reporter of an important syndicate obtained an interview with the Duke for the purpose of gleaning some final grains of information concerning his gracious personal arrangements during the trial. I suppose I may say that this will be one of the biggest affairs of its kind during the lifetime of a generation, began the reporter as an excuse for the unsparing minuteness of detail that he was about to make a quest for. I suppose so. If it comes off, said the Duke lazily, if, queried the reporter in a voice that was something between gasp and a scream. The Duchess and I are both thinking of going on strike, said the Duke. Strike! The baleful word flashed out in all its old hideous familiarity. Was there to be no end to its recurrence? Do you mean, faltered the reporter, that you are contemplating a mutual withdrawal of the charges? Precisely, said the Duke. But think of the arrangements that have been made, the special reporting, the cinematographs, the catering for the distinguished foreign witnesses, the prepared music hall allusions. Think of all the money that has been sunk. Exactly, said the Duke codely. The Duchess and I have realized that it is we who provide the material out of which this great far-reaching industry has been built up. Widespread employment will be given, and enormous profits made during the duration of the case, and we, on whom all the stress and racket falls, will get what? An unenviable notoriety, and the privilege of paying heavy legal expenses, whichever way the verdict goes. Hence our decision to strike. We don't wish to be reconciled. We fully realize that it is a grave step to take, but unless we get some reasonable consideration out of this vast stream of wealth and industry that we have called into being, we intend coming out of court, and staying out. Good afternoon. The news of this latest strike spread universal dismay. Its inaccessibility to the ordinary methods of persuasion made it peculiarly formidable. If the Duke and Duchess persisted in being reconciled, government could hardly be called on to interfere. Public opinion in the shape of social ostracism might be brought to bear on them, but that was as far as coercive measures could go. There was nothing for it but a conference with powers to propose liberal terms. As it was, several of the foreign witnesses had already departed, and others had telegraphed, cancelling their hotel arrangements. The conference, protracted, uncomfortable, and occasionally acrimonious, succeeded at last in arranging for a resumption of litigation, but it was a fruitless victory. The Duke, with a touch of his earlier precocity, died of premature decay.