In truth I could see, and my vision confirmed me in my resolve, though that was like the very parting of spirit and flesh. Yet a little longer I would stay since it was the last time.

"You think it is wrong, then?" she cried sharply, though I had said nothing.

"Not for you. A thousand times no. For you it is right.... I am grateful to you beyond words. For me it would be wrong. For me only...."

"Why?" she said, but passed her hand before her face as she had done at our second meeting in the wood. "Oh, I see," she went on simply as a child. "For you it would be wrong." Then with a little indrawn laugh, "and, d'you remember, I called you lucky—once—at first. You who must never come here again!"

She left me to sit a little longer by the screen, and I heard the sound of her feet die out along the gallery above.



MRS. BATHURST

FROM LYDEN'S "IRENIUS"

ACT III. Sc. II.

Gow.—Had it been your Prince instead of a groom caught in this noose there's not an astrologer of the city——

PRINCE.—Sacked! Sacked! We were a city yesterday.

Gow.—So be it, but I was not governor. Not an astrologer, but would ha' sworn he'd foreseen it at the last versary of Venus, when Vulcan caught her with Mars in the house of stinking Capricorn. But since 'tis Jack of the Straw that hangs, the forgetful stars had it not on their tablets.

PRINCE.—Another life! Were there any left to die? How did the poor fool come by it?

Gow.—Simpliciter thus. She that damned him to death knew not that she did it, or would have died ere she had done it. For she loved him. He that hangs him does so in obedience to the Duke, and asks no more than "Where is the rope?" The Duke, very exactly he hath told us, works God's will, in which holy employ he's not to be questioned. We have then left upon this finger, only Jack whose soul now plucks the left sleeve of Destiny in Hell to overtake why she clapped him up like a fly on a sunny wall. Whuff! Soh!

PRINCE.—Your cloak, Ferdinand. I'll sleep now.

FERDINAND.—Sleep, then.. He too, loved his life?

Gow.—He was born of woman ... but at the end threw life from him, like your Prince, for a little sleep ... "Have I any look of a King?" said he, clanking his chain—"to be so baited on all sides by Fortune, that I must e'en die now to live with myself one day longer?" I left him railing at Fortune and woman's love.

FERDINAND.—Ah, woman's love!

(Aside) Who knows not Fortune, glutted on easy thrones, Stealing from feasts as rare to coneycatch, Privily in the hedgerows for a clown With that same cruel-lustful hand and eye, Those nails and wedges, that one hammer and lead, And the very gerb of long-stored lightnings loosed Yesterday 'gainst some King.



MRS. BATHURST The day that I chose to visit H.M.S. Peridot in Simon's Bay was the day that the Admiral had chosen to send her up the coast. She was just steaming out to sea as my train came in, and since the rest of the Fleet were either coaling or busy at the rifle-ranges a thousand feet up the hill, I found myself stranded, lunchless, on the sea-front with no hope of return to Cape Town before five P.M. At this crisis I had the luck to come across my friend Inspector Hooper, Cape Government Railways, in command of an engine and a brake-van chalked for repair.

"If you get something to eat," he said, "I'll run you down to Glengariff siding till the goods comes along. It's cooler there than here, you see."

I got food and drink from the Greeks who sell all things at a price, and the engine trotted us a couple of miles up the line to a bay of drifted sand and a plank-platform half buried in sand not a hundred yards from the edge of the surf. Moulded dunes, whiter than any snow, rolled far inland up a brown and purple valley of splintered rocks and dry scrub. A crowd of Malays hauled at a net beside two blue and green boats on the beach; a picnic party danced and shouted barefoot where a tiny river trickled across the flat, and a circle of dry hills, whose feet were set in sands of silver, locked us in against a seven-coloured sea. At either horn of the bay the railway line, cut just above high water-mark, ran round a shoulder of piled rocks, and disappeared.

"You see there's always a breeze here," said Hooper, opening the door as the engine left us in the siding on the sand, and the strong south-easter buffeting under Elsie's Peak dusted sand into our tickey beer. Presently he sat down to a file full of spiked documents. He had returned from a long trip up-country, where he had been reporting on damaged rolling- stock, as far away as Rhodesia. The weight of the bland wind on my eyelids; the song of it under the car roof, and high up among the rocks; the drift of fine grains chasing each other musically ashore; the tramp of the surf; the voices of the picnickers; the rustle of Hooper's file, and the presence of the assured sun, joined with the beer to cast me into magical slumber. The hills of False Bay were just dissolving into those of fairyland when I heard footsteps on the sand outside, and the clink of our couplings.

"Stop that!" snapped Hooper, without raising his head from his work. "It's those dirty little Malay boys, you see: they're always playing with the trucks...."

"Don't be hard on 'em. The railway's a general refuge in Africa," I replied.

"'Tis—up-country at any rate. That reminds me," he felt in his waistcoat- pocket, "I've got a curiosity for you from Wankies—beyond Buluwayo. It's more of a souvenir perhaps than——"

"The old hotel's inhabited," cried a voice. "White men from the language. Marines to the front! Come on, Pritch. Here's your Belmont. Wha—i—i!"

The last word dragged like a rope as Mr. Pyecroft ran round to the open door, and stood looking up into my face. Behind him an enormous Sergeant of Marines trailed a stalk of dried seaweed, and dusted the sand nervously from his fingers.

"What are you doing here?" I asked. "I thought the Hierophant was down the coast?"

"We came in last Tuesday—from Tristan D'Acunha—for overhaul, and we shall be in dockyard 'ands for two months, with boiler-seatings."

"Come and sit down," Hooper put away the file.

"This is Mr. Hooper of the Railway," I exclaimed, as Pyecroft turned to haul up the black-moustached sergeant.

"This is Sergeant Pritchard, of the Agaric, an old shipmate," said he. "We were strollin' on the beach." The monster blushed and nodded. He filled up one side of the van when he sat down.

"And this is my friend, Mr. Pyecroft," I added to Hooper, already busy with the extra beer which my prophetic soul had bought from the Greeks.

"Moi aussi" quoth Pyecroft, and drew out beneath his coat a labelled quart bottle.

"Why, it's Bass," cried Hooper.

"It was Pritchard," said Pyecroft. "They can't resist him."

"That's not so," said Pritchard, mildly.

"Not verbatim per'aps, but the look in the eye came to the same thing."

"Where was it?" I demanded.

"Just on beyond here—at Kalk Bay. She was slappin' a rug in a back verandah. Pritch hadn't more than brought his batteries to bear, before she stepped indoors an' sent it flyin' over the wall."

Pyecroft patted the warm bottle.

"It was all a mistake," said Pritchard. "I shouldn't wonder if she mistook me for Maclean. We're about of a size."

I had heard householders of Muizenburg, St. James's, and Kalk Bay complain of the difficulty of keeping beer or good servants at the seaside, and I began to see the reason. None the less, it was excellent Bass, and I too drank to the health of that large-minded maid.

"It's the uniform that fetches 'em, an' they fetch it," said Pyecroft. "My simple navy blue is respectable, but not fascinatin'. Now Pritch in 'is Number One rig is always 'purr Mary, on the terrace'—ex officio as you might say."

"She took me for Maclean, I tell you," Pritchard insisted. "Why—why—to listen to him you wouldn't think that only yesterday——"

"Pritch," said Pyecroft, "be warned in time. If we begin tellin' what we know about each other we'll be turned out of the pub. Not to mention aggravated desertion on several occasions——"

"Never anything more than absence without leaf—I defy you to prove it," said the Sergeant hotly. "An' if it comes to that how about Vancouver in '87?"

"How about it? Who pulled bow in the gig going ashore? Who told Boy Niven...?"

"Surely you were court martialled for that?" I said. The story of Boy Niven who lured seven or eight able-bodied seamen and marines into the woods of British Columbia used to be a legend of the Fleet.

"Yes, we were court-martialled to rights," said Pritchard, "but we should have been tried for murder if Boy Niven 'adn't been unusually tough. He told us he had an uncle 'oo'd give us land to farm. 'E said he was born at the back o' Vancouver Island, and all the time the beggar was a balmy Barnado Orphan!"

"But we believed him," said Pyecroft. "I did—you did—Paterson did—an' 'oo was the Marine that married the cocoanut-woman afterwards—him with the mouth?"

"Oh, Jones, Spit-Kid Jones. I 'aven't thought of 'im in years," said Pritchard. "Yes, Spit-Kid believed it, an' George Anstey and Moon. We were very young an' very curious."

"But lovin' an' trustful to a degree," said Pyecroft.

"Remember when 'e told us to walk in single file for fear o' bears? 'Remember, Pye, when 'e 'opped about in that bog full o' ferns an' sniffed an' said 'e could smell the smoke of 'is uncle's farm? An' all the time it was a dirty little out-lyin' uninhabited island. We walked round it in a day, an' come back to our boat lyin' on the beach. A whole day Boy Niven kept us walkin' in circles lookin' for 'is uncle's farm! He said his uncle was compelled by the law of the land to give us a farm!"

"Don't get hot, Pritch. We believed," said Pyecroft.

"He'd been readin' books. He only did it to get a run ashore an' have himself talked of. A day an' a night—eight of us—followin' Boy Niven round an uninhabited island in the Vancouver archipelago! Then the picket came for us an' a nice pack o' idiots we looked!"

"What did you get for it?" Hooper asked.

"Heavy thunder with continuous lightning for two hours. Thereafter sleet- squalls, a confused sea, and cold, unfriendly weather till conclusion o' cruise," said Pyecroft. "It was only what we expected, but what we felt, an' I assure you, Mr. Hooper, even a sailor-man has a heart to break, was bein' told that we able seamen an' promisin' marines 'ad misled Boy Niven. Yes, we poor back-to-the-landers was supposed to 'ave misled him! He rounded on us, o' course, an' got off easy."

"Excep' for what we gave him in the steerin'-flat when we came out o' cells. 'Eard anything of 'im lately, Pye?"

"Signal Boatswain in the Channel Fleet, I believe—Mr. L.L. Niven is."

"An' Anstey died o' fever in Benin," Pritchard mused. "What come to Moon? Spit-Kid we know about."

"Moon—Moon! Now where did I last...? Oh yes, when I was in the Palladium! I met Quigley at Buncrana Station. He told me Moon 'ad run when the Astrild sloop was cruising among the South Seas three years back. He always showed signs o' bein' a Mormonastic beggar. Yes, he slipped off quietly an' they 'adn't time to chase 'im round the islands even if the navigatin' officer 'ad been equal to the job."

"Wasn't he?" said Hooper.

"Not so. Accordin' to Quigley the Astrild spent half her commission rompin' up the beach like a she-turtle, an' the other half hatching turtles' eggs on the top o' numerous reefs. When she was docked at Sydney her copper looked like Aunt Maria's washing on the line—an' her 'midship frames was sprung. The commander swore the dockyard 'ad done it haulin' the pore thing on to the slips. They do do strange things at sea, Mr. Hooper."

"Ah! I'm not a tax-payer," said Hooper, and opened a fresh bottle. The Sergeant seemed to be one who had a difficulty in dropping subjects.

"How it all comes back, don't it?" he said. "Why Moon must 'ave 'ad sixteen years' service before he ran."

"It takes 'em at all ages. Look at—you know," said Pyecroft.

"Who?" I asked.

"A service man within eighteen months of his pension, is the party you're thinkin' of," said Pritchard. "A warrant 'oose name begins with a V., isn't it?"

"But, in a way o' puttin' it, we can't say that he actually did desert," Pyecroft suggested.

"Oh, no," said Pritchard. "It was only permanent absence up country without leaf. That was all."

"Up country?" said Hooper. "Did they circulate his description?"

"What for?" said Pritchard, most impolitely.

"Because deserters are like columns in the war. They don't move away from the line, you see. I've known a chap caught at Salisbury that way tryin' to get to Nyassa. They tell me, but o' course I don't know, that they don't ask questions on the Nyassa Lake Flotilla up there. I've heard of a P. and O. quartermaster in full command of an armed launch there."

"Do you think Click 'ud ha' gone up that way?" Pritchard asked.

"There's no saying. He was sent up to Bloemfontein to take over some Navy ammunition left in the fort. We know he took it over and saw it into the trucks. Then there was no more Click—then or thereafter. Four months ago it transpired, and thus the casus belli stands at present," said Pyecroft.

"What were his marks?" said Hooper again.

"Does the Railway get a reward for returnin' 'em, then?" said Pritchard.

"If I did d'you suppose I'd talk about it?" Hooper retorted angrily.

"You seemed so very interested," said Pritchard with equal crispness.

"Why was he called Click?" I asked to tide over an uneasy little break in the conversation. The two men were staring at each other very fixedly.

"Because of an ammunition hoist carryin' away," said Pyecroft. "And it carried away four of 'is teeth—on the lower port side, wasn't it, Pritch? The substitutes which he bought weren't screwed home in a manner o' sayin'. When he talked fast they used to lift a little on the bed plate. 'Ence, 'Click.' They called 'im a superior man which is what we'd call a long, black-'aired, genteely speakin', 'alf-bred beggar on the lower deck."

"Four false teeth on the lower left jaw," said Hooper, his hand in his waistcoat pocket. "What tattoo marks?"

"Look here," began Pritchard, half rising. "I'm sure we're very grateful to you as a gentleman for your 'orspitality, but per'aps we may 'ave made an error in—"

I looked at Pyecroft for aid, Hooper was crimsoning rapidly.

"If the fat marine now occupying the foc'sle will kindly bring 'is status quo to an anchor yet once more, we may be able to talk like gentlemen— not to say friends," said Pyecroft. "He regards you, Mr. Hooper, as a emissary of the Law."

"I only wish to observe that when a gentleman exhibits such a peculiar, or I should rather say, such a bloomin' curiosity in identification marks as our friend here——"

"Mr. Pritchard," I interposed, "I'll take all the responsibility for Mr. Hooper."

"An' you'll apologise all round," said Pyecroft. "You're a rude little man, Pritch."

"But how was I——" he began, wavering.

"I don't know an' I don't care. Apologise!"

The giant looked round bewildered and took our little hands into his vast grip, one by one. "I was wrong," he said meekly as a sheep. "My suspicions was unfounded. Mr. Hooper, I apologise."

"You did quite right to look out for your own end o' the line," said Hooper. "I'd ha' done the same with a gentleman I didn't know, you see. If you don't mind I'd like to hear a little more o' your Mr. Vickery. It's safe with me, you see."

"Why did Vickery run," I began, but Pyecroft's smile made me turn my question to "Who was she?"

"She kep' a little hotel at Hauraki—near Auckland," said Pyecroft.

"By Gawd!" roared Pritchard, slapping his hand on his leg. "Not Mrs. Bathurst!"

Pyecroft nodded slowly, and the Sergeant called all the powers of darkness to witness his bewilderment.

"So far as I could get at it Mrs. B. was the lady in question."

"But Click was married," cried Pritchard.

"An' 'ad a fifteen year old daughter. 'E's shown me her photograph. Settin' that aside, so to say, 'ave you ever found these little things make much difference? Because I haven't."

"Good Lord Alive an' Watchin'!... Mrs. Bathurst...." Then with another roar: "You can say what you please, Pye, but you don't make me believe it was any of 'er fault. She wasn't that!"

"If I was going to say what I please, I'd begin by callin' you a silly ox an' work up to the higher pressures at leisure. I'm trying to say solely what transpired. M'rover, for once you're right. It wasn't her fault."

"You couldn't 'aven't made me believe it if it 'ad been," was the answer.

Such faith in a Sergeant of Marines interested me greatly. "Never mind about that," I cried. "Tell me what she was like."

"She was a widow," said Pyecroft. "Left so very young and never re-spliced. She kep' a little hotel for warrants and non-coms close to Auckland, an' she always wore black silk, and 'er neck—"

"You ask what she was like," Pritchard broke in. "Let me give you an instance. I was at Auckland first in '97, at the end o' the Marroquin's commission, an' as I'd been promoted I went up with the others. She used to look after us all, an' she never lost by it—not a penny! 'Pay me now,' she'd say, 'or settle later. I know you won't let me suffer. Send the money from home if you like,' Why, gentlemen all, I tell you I've seen that lady take her own gold watch an' chain off her neck in the bar an' pass it to a bosun 'oo'd come ashore without 'is ticker an' 'ad to catch the last boat. 'I don't know your name,' she said, 'but when you've done with it, you'll find plenty that know me on the front. Send it back by one o' them.' And it was worth thirty pounds if it was worth 'arf a crown. The little gold watch, Pye, with the blue monogram at the back. But, as I was sayin', in those days she kep' a beer that agreed with me—Slits it was called. One way an' another I must 'ave punished a good few bottles of it while we was in the bay—comin' ashore every night or so. Chaffin across the bar like, once when we were alone, 'Mrs. B.,' I said, 'when next I call I want you to remember that this is my particular—just as you're my particular?' (She'd let you go that far!) 'Just as you're my particular,' I said. 'Oh, thank you, Sergeant Pritchard,' she says, an' put 'er hand up to the curl be'ind 'er ear. Remember that way she had, Pye?"

"I think so," said the sailor.

"Yes, 'Thank you, Sergeant Pritchard,' she says. 'The least I can do is to mark it for you in case you change your mind. There's no great demand for it in the Fleet,' she says, 'but to make sure I'll put it at the back o' the shelf,' an' she snipped off a piece of her hair ribbon with that old dolphin cigar cutter on the bar—remember it, Pye?—an' she tied a bow round what was left—just four bottles. That was '97—no, '96. In '98 I was in the Resiliant—China station—full commission. In Nineteen One, mark you, I was in the Carthusian, back in Auckland Bay again. Of course I went up to Mrs. B.'s with the rest of us to see how things were goin'. They were the same as ever. (Remember the big tree on the pavement by the side-bar, Pye?) I never said anythin' in special (there was too many of us talkin' to her), but she saw me at once."

"That wasn't difficult?" I ventured.

"Ah, but wait. I was comin' up to the bar, when, 'Ada,' she says to her niece, 'get me Sergeant Pritchard's particular,' and, gentlemen all, I tell you before I could shake 'ands with the lady, there were those four bottles o' Slits, with 'er 'air ribbon in a bow round each o' their necks, set down in front o' me, an' as she drew the cork she looked at me under her eyebrows in that blindish way she had o' lookin', an', 'Sergeant Pritchard,' she says, 'I do 'ope you 'aven't changed your mind about your particulars.' That's the kind o' woman she was—after five years!"

"I don't see her yet somehow," said Hooper, but with sympathy.

"She—she never scrupled to feed a lame duck or set 'er foot on a scorpion at any time of 'er life," Pritchard added valiantly.

"That don't help me either. My mother's like that for one."

The giant heaved inside his uniform and rolled his eyes at the car-roof. Said Pyecroft suddenly:—

"How many women have you been intimate with all over the world, Pritch?"

Pritchard blushed plum colour to the short hairs of his seventeen-inch neck.

"'Undreds," said Pyecroft. "So've I. How many of 'em can you remember in your own mind, settin' aside the first—an' per'aps the last—and one more?"

"Few, wonderful few, now I tax myself," said Sergeant Pritchard, relievedly.

"An' how many times might you 'ave been at Aukland?"

"One—two," he began. "Why, I can't make it more than three times in ten years. But I can remember every time that I ever saw Mrs. B."

"So can I—an' I've only been to Auckland twice—how she stood an' what she was sayin' an' what she looked like. That's the secret. 'Tisn't beauty, so to speak, nor good talk necessarily. It's just It. Some women'll stay in a man's memory if they once walked down a street, but most of 'em you can live with a month on end, an' next commission you'd be put to it to certify whether they talked in their sleep or not, as one might say."

"Ah," said Hooper. "That's more the idea. I've known just two women of that nature."

"An' it was no fault o' theirs?" asked Pritchard.

"None whatever. I know that!"

"An' if a man gets struck with that kind o' woman, Mr. Hooper?" Pritchard went on.

"He goes crazy—or just saves himself," was the slow answer.

"You've hit it," said the Sergeant. "You've seen an' known somethin' in the course o' your life, Mr. Hooper. I'm lookin' at you!" He set down his bottle.

"And how often had Vickery seen her?" I asked.

"That's the dark an' bloody mystery," Pyecroft answered. "I'd never come across him till I come out in the Hierophant just now, an' there wasn't any one in the ship who knew much about him. You see, he was what you call a superior man. 'E spoke to me once or twice about Auckland and Mrs. B. on the voyage out. I called that to mind subsequently. There must 'ave been a good deal between 'em, to my way o' thinkin'. Mind you I'm only giving you my sum of it all, because all I know is second-hand so to speak, or rather I should say more than second-'and."

"How?" said Hooper peremptorily. "You must have seen it or heard it."

"Yes," said Pyecroft. "I used to think seein' and hearin' was the only regulation aids to ascertainin' facts, but as we get older we get more accommodatin'. The cylinders work easier, I suppose.... Were you in Cape Town last December when Phyllis's Circus came?"

"No—up country," said Hooper, a little nettled at the change of venue.

"I ask because they had a new turn of a scientific nature called 'Home and Friends for a Tickey.'"

"Oh, you mean the cinematograph—the pictures of prize-fights and steamers. I've seen 'em up country."

"Biograph or cinematograph was what I was alludin' to. London Bridge with the omnibuses—a troopship goin' to the war—marines on parade at Portsmouth an' the Plymouth Express arrivin' at Paddin'ton."

"Seen 'em all. Seen 'em all," said Hooper impatiently.

"We Hierophants came in just before Christmas week an' leaf was easy."

"I think a man gets fed up with Cape Town quicker than anywhere else on the station. Why, even Durban's more like Nature. We was there for Christmas," Pritchard put in.

"Not bein' a devotee of Indian peeris, as our Doctor said to the Pusser, I can't exactly say. Phyllis's was good enough after musketry practice at Mozambique. I couldn't get off the first two or three nights on account of what you might call an imbroglio with our Torpedo Lieutenant in the submerged flat, where some pride of the West country had sugared up a gyroscope; but I remember Vickery went ashore with our Carpenter Rigdon— old Crocus we called him. As a general rule Crocus never left 'is ship unless an' until he was 'oisted out with a winch, but when 'e went 'e would return noddin' like a lily gemmed with dew. We smothered him down below that night, but the things 'e said about Vickery as a fittin' playmate for a Warrant Officer of 'is cubic capacity, before we got him quiet, was what I should call pointed."

"I've been with Crocus—in the Redoubtable," said the Sergeant. "He's a character if there is one."

"Next night I went into Cape Town with Dawson and Pratt; but just at the door of the Circus I came across Vickery. 'Oh!' he says, 'you're the man I'm looking for. Come and sit next me. This way to the shillin' places!' I went astern at once, protestin' because tickey seats better suited my so-called finances. 'Come on,' says Vickery, 'I'm payin'.' Naturally I abandoned Pratt and Dawson in anticipation o' drinks to match the seats. 'No,' he says, when this was 'inted—'not now. Not now. As many as you please afterwards, but I want you sober for the occasion.' I caught 'is face under a lamp just then, an' the appearance of it quite cured me of my thirsts. Don't mistake. It didn't frighten me. It made me anxious. I can't tell you what it was like, but that was the effect which it 'ad on me. If you want to know, it reminded me of those things in bottles in those herbalistic shops at Plymouth—preserved in spirits of wine. White an' crumply things—previous to birth as you might say."

"You 'ave a beastial mind, Pye," said the Sergeant, relighting his pipe.

"Perhaps. We were in the front row, an' 'Home an' Friends' came on early. Vickery touched me on the knee when the number went up. 'If you see anything that strikes you,' he says, 'drop me a hint'; then he went on clicking. We saw London Bridge an' so forth an' so on, an' it was most interestin'. I'd never seen it before. You 'eard a little dynamo like buzzin', but the pictures were the real thing—alive an' movin'."

"I've seen 'em," said Hooper. "Of course they are taken from the very thing itself—you see."

"Then the Western Mail came in to Paddin'ton on the big magic lantern sheet. First we saw the platform empty an' the porters standin' by. Then the engine come in, head on, an' the women in the front row jumped: she headed so straight. Then the doors opened and the passengers came out and the porters got the luggage—just like life. Only—only when any one came down too far towards us that was watchin', they walked right out o' the picture, so to speak. I was 'ighly interested, I can tell you. So were all of us. I watched an old man with a rug 'oo'd dropped a book an' was tryin' to pick it up, when quite slowly, from be'ind two porters—carryin' a little reticule an' lookin' from side to side—comes out Mrs. Bathurst. There was no mistakin' the walk in a hundred thousand. She come forward— right forward—she looked out straight at us with that blindish look which Pritch alluded to. She walked on and on till she melted out of the picture—like—like a shadow jumpin' over a candle, an' as she went I 'eard Dawson in the ticky seats be'ind sing out: 'Christ! There's Mrs. B.!'"

Hooper swallowed his spittle and leaned forward intently.

"Vickery touched me on the knee again. He was clickin' his four false teeth with his jaw down like an enteric at the last kick. 'Are you sure?' says he. 'Sure,' I says, 'didn't you 'ear Dawson give tongue? Why, it's the woman herself.' 'I was sure before,' he says, 'but I brought you to make sure. Will you come again with me to-morrow?'

"'Willingly,' I says, 'it's like meetin' old friends.'

"'Yes,' he says, openin' his watch, 'very like. It will be four-and-twenty hours less four minutes before I see her again. Come and have a drink,' he says. 'It may amuse you, but it's no sort of earthly use to me.' He went out shaking his head an' stumblin' over people's feet as if he was drunk already. I anticipated a swift drink an' a speedy return, because I wanted to see the performin' elephants. Instead o' which Vickery began to navigate the town at the rate o' knots, lookin' in at a bar every three minutes approximate Greenwich time. I'm not a drinkin' man, though there are those present"—he cocked his unforgetable eye at me—"who may have seen me more or less imbued with the fragrant spirit. None the less, when I drink I like to do it at anchor an' not at an average speed of eighteen knots on the measured mile. There's a tank as you might say at the back o' that big hotel up the hill—what do they call it?"

"The Molteno Reservoir," I suggested, and Hooper nodded.

"That was his limit o' drift. We walked there an' we come down through the Gardens—there was a South-Easter blowin'—an' we finished up by the Docks. Then we bore up the road to Salt River, and wherever there was a pub Vickery put in sweatin'. He didn't look at what he drunk—he didn't look at the change. He walked an' he drunk an' he perspired in rivers. I understood why old Crocus 'ad come back in the condition 'e did, because Vickery an' I 'ad two an' a half hours o' this gipsy manoeuvre an' when we got back to the station there wasn't a dry atom on or in me."

"Did he say anything?" Pritchard asked.

"The sum total of 'is conversation from 7.45 P.M. till 11.15 P.M. was 'Let's have another.' Thus the mornin' an' the evenin' were the first day, as Scripture says.... To abbreviate a lengthy narrative, I went into Cape Town for five consecutive nights with Master Vickery, and in that time I must 'ave logged about fifty knots over the ground an' taken in two gallon o' all the worst spirits south the Equator. The evolution never varied. Two shilling seats for us two; five minutes o' the pictures, an' perhaps forty-five seconds o' Mrs. B. walking down towards us with that blindish look in her eyes an' the reticule in her hand. Then out walk—and drink till train time."

"What did you think?" said Hooper, his hand fingering his waistcoat pocket.

"Several things," said Pyecroft. "To tell you the truth, I aren't quite done thinkin' about it yet. Mad? The man was a dumb lunatic—must 'ave been for months—years p'raps. I know somethin' o' maniacs, as every man in the Service must. I've been shipmates with a mad skipper—an' a lunatic Number One, but never both together I thank 'Eaven. I could give you the names o' three captains now 'oo ought to be in an asylum, but you don't find me interferin' with the mentally afflicted till they begin to lay about 'em with rammers an' winch-handles. Only once I crept up a little into the wind towards Master Vickery. 'I wonder what she's doin' in England,' I says. 'Don't it seem to you she's lookin' for somebody?' That was in the Gardens again, with the South-Easter blowin' as we were makin' our desperate round. 'She's lookin' for me,' he says, stoppin' dead under a lamp an' clickin'. When he wasn't drinkin', in which case all 'is teeth clicked on the glass, 'e was clickin' 'is four false teeth like a Marconi ticker. 'Yes! lookin' for me,' he said, an' he went on very softly an' as you might say affectionately. 'But? he went on, 'in future, Mr. Pyecroft, I should take it kindly of you if you'd confine your remarks to the drinks set before you. Otherwise,' he says, 'with the best will in the world towards you, I may find myself guilty of murder! Do you understand?' he says. 'Perfectly,' I says, 'but would it at all soothe you to know that in such a case the chances o' your being killed are precisely equivalent to the chances o' me being outed.' 'Why, no,' he says, 'I'm almost afraid that 'ud be a temptation,'

"Then I said—we was right under the lamp by that arch at the end o' the Gardens where the trams came round—'Assumin' murder was done—or attempted murder—I put it to you that you would still be left so badly crippled, as one might say, that your subsequent capture by the police—to 'oom you would 'ave to explain—would be largely inevitable.' 'That's better,' 'e says, passin' 'is hands over his forehead. 'That's much better, because,' he says, 'do you know, as I am now, Pye, I'm not so sure if I could explain anything much.' Those were the only particular words I had with 'im in our walks as I remember."

"What walks!" said Hooper. "Oh my soul, what walks!"

"They were chronic," said Pyecroft gravely, "but I didn't anticipate any danger till the Circus left. Then I anticipated that, bein' deprived of 'is stimulant, he might react on me, so to say, with a hatchet. Consequently, after the final performance an' the ensuin' wet walk, I kep' myself aloof from my superior officer on board in the execution of 'is duty as you might put it. Consequently, I was interested when the sentry informs me while I was passin' on my lawful occasions that Click had asked to see the captain. As a general rule warrant officers don't dissipate much of the owner's time, but Click put in an hour and more be'ind that door. My duties kep' me within eyeshot of it. Vickery came out first, an' 'e actually nodded at me an' smiled. This knocked me out o' the boat, because, havin' seen 'is face for five consecutive nights, I didn't anticipate any change there more than a condenser in hell, so to speak. The owner emerged later. His face didn't read off at all, so I fell back on his cox, 'oo'd been eight years with him and knew him better than boat signals. Lamson—that was the cox's name—crossed 'is bows once or twice at low speeds an' dropped down to me visibly concerned. 'He's shipped 'is court-martial face,' says Lamson. 'Some one's goin' to be 'ung. I've never seen that look but once before when they chucked the gun-sights overboard in the Fantastic.' Throwin' gun-sights overboard, Mr. Hooper, is the equivalent for mutiny in these degenerate days. It's done to attract the notice of the authorities an' the Western Mornin' News—generally by a stoker. Naturally, word went round the lower deck an' we had a private over'aul of our little consciences. But, barrin' a shirt which a second- class stoker said 'ad walked into 'is bag from the marines flat by itself, nothin' vital transpired. The owner went about flyin' the signal for 'attend public execution,' so to say, but there was no corpse at the yardarm. 'E lunched on the beach an' 'e returned with 'is regulation harbour-routine face about 3 P. M. Thus Lamson lost prestige for raising false alarms. The only person 'oo might 'ave connected the epicycloidal gears correctly was one Pyecroft, when he was told that Mr. Vickery would go up country that same evening to take over certain naval ammunition left after the war in Bloemfontein Fort. No details was ordered to accompany Master Vickery. He was told off first person singular—as a unit—-by himself."

The marine whistled penetratingly.

"That's what I thought," said Pyecroft. "I went ashore with him in the cutter an' 'e asked me to walk through the station. He was clickin' audibly, but otherwise seemed happy-ish.

"'You might like to know,' he says, stoppin' just opposite the Admiral's front gate, 'that Phyllis's Circus will be performin' at Worcester to-morrow night. So I shall see 'er yet once again. You've been very patient with me,' he says.

"'Look here, Vickery,' I said, 'this thing's come to be just as much as I can stand. Consume your own smoke. I don't want to know any more.'

"'You!' he said. 'What have you got to complain of?—you've only 'ad to watch. I'm it,' he says, 'but that's neither here nor there,' he says. 'I've one thing to say before shakin' 'ands. Remember,' 'e says—we were just by the Admiral's garden-gate then—'remember, that I am not a murderer, because my lawful wife died in childbed six weeks after I came out. That much at least I am clear of,' 'e says.

"'Then what have you done that signifies?' I said. 'What's the rest of it?'

"'The rest,' 'e says, 'is silence,' an' he shook 'ands and went clickin' into Simons Town station."

"Did he stop to see Mrs. Bathurst at Worcester?" I asked.

"It's not known. He reported at Bloemfontein, saw the ammunition into the trucks, and then 'e disappeared. Went out—deserted, if you care to put it so—within eighteen months of his pension, an' if what 'e said about 'is wife was true he was a free man as 'e then stood. How do you read it off?"

"Poor devil!" said Hooper. "To see her that way every night! I wonder what it was."

"I've made my 'ead ache in that direction many a long night."

"But I'll swear Mrs. B. 'ad no 'and in it," said the Sergeant unshaken.

"No. Whatever the wrong or deceit was, he did it, I'm sure o' that. I 'ad to look at 'is face for five consecutive nights. I'm not so fond o' navigatin' about Cape Town with a South-Easter blowin' these days. I can hear those teeth click, so to say."

"Ah, those teeth," said Hooper, and his hand went to his waistcoat pocket once more. "Permanent things false teeth are. You read about 'em in all the murder trials."

"What d'you suppose the captain knew—or did?" I asked.

"I never turned my searchlight that way," Pyecroft answered unblushingly.

We all reflected together, and drummed on empty beer bottles as the picnic-party, sunburned, wet, and sandy, passed our door singing "The Honeysuckle and the Bee."

"Pretty girl under that kapje," said Pyecroft.

"They never circulated his description?" said Pritchard.

"I was askin' you before these gentlemen came," said Hooper to me, "whether you knew Wankies—on the way to the Zambesi—beyond Buluwayo?"

"Would he pass there—tryin' to get to that Lake what's 'is name?" said Pritchard.

Hooper shook his head and went on: "There's a curious bit o' line there, you see. It runs through solid teak forest—a sort o' mahogany really— seventy-two miles without a curve. I've had a train derailed there twenty- three times in forty miles. I was up there a month ago relievin' a sick inspector, you see. He told me to look out for a couple of tramps in the teak."

"Two?" Pyecroft said. "I don't envy that other man if——"

"We get heaps of tramps up there since the war. The inspector told me I'd find 'em at M'Bindwe siding waiting to go North. He'd given 'em some grub and quinine, you see. I went up on a construction train. I looked out for 'em. I saw them miles ahead along the straight, waiting in the teak. One of 'em was standin' up by the dead-end of tke siding an' the other was squattin' down lookin' up at 'im, you see."

"What did you do for 'em?" said Pritchard.

"There wasn't much I could do, except bury 'em. There'd been a bit of a thunderstorm in the teak, you see, and they were both stone dead and as black as charcoal. That's what they really were, you see—charcoal. They fell to bits when we tried to shift 'em. The man who was standin' up had the false teeth. I saw 'em shinin' against the black. Fell to bits he did too, like his mate squatting down an' watchin' him, both of 'em all wet in the rain. Both burned to charcoal, you see. And—that's what made me ask about marks just now—the false-toother was tattooed on the arms and chest—a crown and foul anchor with M.V. above."

"I've seen that," said Pyecroft quickly. "It was so."

"But if he was all charcoal-like?" said Pritchard, shuddering.

"You know how writing shows up white on a burned letter? Well, it was like that, you see. We buried 'em in the teak and I kept... But he was a friend of you two gentlemen, you see."

Mr. Hooper brought his hand away from his waistcoat-pocket—empty.

Pritchard covered his face with his hands for a moment, like a child shutting out an ugliness.

"And to think of her at Hauraki!" he murmured—"with 'er 'air-ribbon on my beer. 'Ada,' she said to her niece... Oh, my Gawd!"...

"On a summer afternoon, when the honeysuckle blooms, And all Nature seems at rest, Underneath the bower, 'mid the perfume of the flower, Sat a maiden with the one she loves the best——"

sang the picnic-party waiting for their train at Glengariff.

"Well, I don't know how you feel about it," said Pyecroft, "but 'avin' seen 'is face for five consecutive nights on end, I'm inclined to finish what's left of the beer an' thank Gawd he's dead!"



BELOW THE MILL DAM

"OUR FATHERS ALSO"

By—they are by with mirth and tears, Wit or the works of Desire— Cushioned about on the kindly years Between the wall and the fire.

The grapes are pressed, the corn is shocked— Standeth no more to glean; For the Gates of Love and Learning locked When they went out between.

All lore our Lady Venus bares Signalled it was or told By the dear lips long given to theirs And longer to the mould.

All Profit, all Device, all Truth Written it was or said By the mighty men of their mighty youth. Which is mighty being dead.

The film that floats before their eyes The Temple's Veil they call; And the dust that on the Shewbread lies Is holy over all.

Warn them of seas that slip our yoke Of slow conspiring stars— The ancient Front of Things unbroke But heavy with new wars?

By—they are by with mirth and tears. Wit or the waste of Desire— Cushioned about on the kindly years Between the wall and the fire.

BELOW THE MILL DAM

"Book—Book—Domesday Book!" They were letting in the water for the evening stint at Robert's Mill, and the wooden Wheel where lived the Spirit of the Mill settled to its nine hundred year old song: "Here Azor, a freeman, held one rod, but it never paid geld. Nun-nun-nunquam geldavit. Here Reinbert has one villein and four cottars with one plough—and wood for six hogs and two fisheries of sixpence and a mill of ten shillings—unum molinum—one mill. Reinbert's mill—Robert's Mill. Then and afterwards and now—tunc et post et modo—Robert's Mill. Book—Book—Domesday Book!"

"I confess," said the Black Rat on the crossbeam, luxuriously trimming his whiskers—"I confess I am not above appreciating my position and all it means." He was a genuine old English black rat, a breed which, report says, is rapidly diminishing before the incursions of the brown variety.

"Appreciation is the surest sign of inadequacy," said the Grey Cat, coiled up on a piece of sacking.

"But I know what you mean," she added. "To sit by right at the heart of things—eh?"

"Yes," said the Black Rat, as the old mill shook and the heavy stones thuttered on the grist. "To possess—er—all this environment as an integral part of one's daily life must insensibly of course ... You see?"

"I feel," said the Grey Cat. "Indeed, if we are not saturated with the spirit of the Mill, who should be?"

"Book—Book—Domesday Book!" the Wheel, set to his work, was running off the tenure of the whole rape, for he knew Domesday Book backwards and forwards: "In Ferle tenuit Abbatia de Wiltuna unam hidam et unam virgam et dimidiam. Nunquam geldavit. And Agemond, a freeman, has half a hide and one rod. I remember Agemond well. Charmin' fellow—friend of mine. He married a Norman girl in the days when we rather looked down on the Normans as upstarts. An' Agemond's dead? So he is. Eh, dearie me! dearie me! I remember the wolves howling outside his door in the big frost of Ten Fifty-Nine.... Essewelde hundredum nunquam geldum reddidit. Book! Book! Domesday Book!"

"After all," the Grey Cat continued, "atmospere is life. It is the influences under which we live that count in the long run. Now, outside"— she cocked one ear towards the half-opened door—"there is an absurd convention that rats and cats are, I won't go so far as to say natural enemies, but opposed forces. Some such ruling may be crudely effective—I don't for a minute presume to set up my standards as final—among the ditches; but from the larger point of view that one gains by living at the heart of things, it seems for a rule of life a little overstrained. Why, because some of your associates have, shall I say, liberal views on the ultimate destination of a sack of—er—middlings don't they call them——"

"Something of that sort," said the Black Rat, a most sharp and sweet- toothed judge of everything ground in the mill for the last three years.

"Thanks—middlings be it. Why, as I was saying, must I disarrange my fur and my digestion to chase you round the dusty arena whenever we happen to meet?"

"As little reason," said the Black Rat, "as there is for me, who, I trust, am a person of ordinarily decent instincts, to wait till you have gone on a round of calls, and then to assassinate your very charming children."

"Exactly! It has its humorous side though." The Grey Cat yawned. "The miller seems afflicted by it. He shouted large and vague threats to my address, last night at tea, that he wasn't going to keep cats who 'caught no mice.' Those were his words. I remember the grammar sticking in my throat like a herring-bone."

"And what did you do?"

"What does one do when a barbarian utters? One ceases to utter and removes. I removed—towards his pantry. It was a riposte he might appreciate."

"Really those people grow absolutely insufferable," said the Black Rat. "There is a local ruffian who answers to the name of Mangles—a builder— who has taken possession of the outhouses on the far side of the Wheel for the last fortnight. He has constructed cubical horrors in red brick where those deliciously picturesque pigstyes used to stand. Have you noticed?"

"There has been much misdirected activity of late among the humans. They jabber inordinately. I haven't yet been able to arrive at their reason for existence." The Cat yawned.

"A couple of them came in here last week with wires, and fixed them all about the walls. Wires protected by some abominable composition, ending in iron brackets with glass bulbs. Utterly useless for any purpose and artistically absolutely hideous. What do they mean?"

"Aaah! I have known four-and-twenty leaders of revolt in Faenza," said the Cat, who kept good company with the boarders spending a summer at the Mill Farm. "It means nothing except that humans occasionally bring their dogs with them. I object to dogs in all forms."

"Shouldn't object to dogs," said the Wheel sleepily.... "The Abbot of Wilton kept the best pack in the county. He enclosed all the Harryngton Woods to Sturt Common. Aluric, a freeman, was dispossessed of his holding. They tried the case at Lewes, but he got no change out of William de Warrenne on the bench. William de Warrenne fined Aluric eight and fourpence for treason, and the Abbot of Wilton excommunicated him for blasphemy. Aluric was no sportsman. Then the Abbot's brother married ... I've forgotten her name, but she was a charmin' little woman. The Lady Philippa was her daughter. That was after the barony was conferred. She rode devilish straight to hounds. They were a bit throatier than we breed now, but a good pack: one of the best. The Abbot kept 'em in splendid shape. Now, who was the woman the Abbot kept? Book—Book! I shall have to go right back to Domesday and work up the centuries: Modo per omnia reddit burgum tunc—tunc—tunc! Was it burgum or hundredum? I shall remember in a minute. There's no hurry." He paused as he turned over silvered with showering drops.

"This won't do," said the Waters in the sluice. "Keep moving."

The Wheel swung forward; the Waters roared on the buckets and dropped down to the darkness below.

"Noisier than usual," said the Black Rat. "It must have been raining up the valley."

"Floods maybe," said the Wheel dreamily. "It isn't the proper season, but they can come without warning. I shall never forget the big one—when the Miller went to sleep and forgot to open the hatches. More than two hundred years ago it was, but I recall it distinctly. Most unsettling."

"We lifted that wheel off his bearings," cried the Waters. "We said, 'Take away that bauble!' And in the morning he was five mile down the valley— hung up in a tree."

"Vulgar!" said the Cat. "But I am sure he never lost his dignity."

"We don't know. He looked like the Ace of Diamonds when we had finished with him.... Move on there! Keep on moving. Over! Get over!"

"And why on this day more than any other," said the Wheel statelily. "I am not aware that my department requires the stimulus of external pressure to keep it up to its duties. I trust I have the elementary instincts of a gentleman."

"Maybe," the Waters answered together, leaping down on the buckets. "We only know that you are very stiff on your bearings. Over, get over!"

The Wheel creaked and groaned. There was certainly greater pressure upon him that he had ever felt, and his revolutions had increased from six and three-quarters to eight and a third per minute. But the uproar between the narrow, weed-hung walls annoyed the Grey Cat.

"Isn't it almost time," she said plaintively, "that the person who is paid to understand these things shuts off those vehement drippings with that screw-thing on the top of that box-thing."

"They'll be shut off at eight o'clock as usual," said Rat; "then we can go to dinner."

"But we shan't be shut off till ever so late," said the Waters gaily. "We shall keep it up all night."

"The ineradicable offensiveness of youth is partially compensated for by its eternal hopefulness," said the Cat. "Our dam is not, I am glad to say, designed to furnish water for more than four hours at a time. Reserve is Life."

"Thank goodness!" said the Black Rat. "Then they can return to their native ditches."

"Ditches!" cried the Waters; "Raven's Gill Brook is no ditch. It is almost navigable, and we come from there away." They slid over solid and compact till the Wheel thudded under their weight.

"Raven's Gill Brook," said the Rat. "I never heard of Raven's Gill."

"We are the waters of Harpenden Brook—down from under Callton Rise. Phew! how the race stinks compared with the heather country." Another five foot of water flung itself against the Wheel, broke, roared, gurgled, and was gone.

"Indeed," said the Grey Cat, "I am sorry to tell you that Raven's Gill Brook is cut off from this valley by an absolutely impassable range of mountains, and Callton Rise is more than nine miles away. It belongs to another system entirely."

"Ah yes," said the Rat, grinning, "but we forget that, for the young, water always runs uphill."

"Oh, hopeless! hopeless! hopeless!" cried the Waters, descending open- palmed upon the Wheel "There is nothing between here and Raven's Gill Brook that a hundred yards of channelling and a few square feet of concrete could not remove; and hasn't removed!"

"And Harpenden Brook is north of Raven's Gill and runs into Raven's Gill at the foot of Callton Rise, where ilex trees are, and we come from there!" These were the glassy, clear waters of the high chalk.

"And Batten's Ponds, that are fed by springs, have been led through Trott's Wood, taking the spare water from the old Witches' Spring under Churt Haw, and we—we—we are their combined waters!" Those were the Waters from the upland bogs and moors—a porter-coloured, dusky, and foam- flecked flood.

"It's all very interesting," purred the Cat to the sliding waters, "and I have no doubt that Trott's Woods and Bott's Woods are tremendously important places; but if you could manage to do your work—whose value I don't in the least dispute—a little more soberly, I, for one, should be grateful."

"Book—book—book—book—book—Domesday Book!" The urged Wheel was fairly clattering now: "In Burgelstaltone a monk holds of Earl Godwin one hide and a half with eight villeins. There is a church—and a monk.... I remember that monk. Blessed if he could rattle his rosary off any quicker than I am doing now ... and wood for seven hogs. I must be running twelve to the minute ... almost as fast as Steam. Damnable invention, Steam! ... Surely it's time we went to dinner or prayers—or something. Can't keep up this pressure, day in and day out, and not feel it. I don't mind for myself, of course. Noblesse oblige, you know. I'm only thinking of the Upper and the Nether Millstones. They came out of the common rock. They can't be expected to——"

"Don't worry on our account, please," said the Millstones huskily. "So long as you supply the power we'll supply the weight and the bite."

"Isn't it a trifle blasphemous, though, to work you in this way?" grunted the Wheel. "I seem to remember something about the Mills of God grinding 'slowly.' Slowly was the word!"

"But we are not the Mills of God. We're only the Upper and the Nether Millstones. We have received no instructions to be anything else. We are actuated by power transmitted through you."

"Ah, but let us be merciful as we are strong. Think of all the beautiful little plants that grow on my woodwork. There are five varieties of rare moss within less than one square yard—and all these delicate jewels of nature are being grievously knocked about by this excessive rush of the water."

"Umph!" growled the Millstones. "What with your religious scruples and your taste for botany we'd hardly know you for the Wheel that put the carter's son under last autumn. You never worried about him!"

"He ought to have known better."

"So ought your jewels of nature. Tell 'em to grow where it's safe."

"How a purely mercantile life debases and brutalises!" said the Cat to the Rat.

"They were such beautiful little plants too," said the Rat tenderly. "Maiden's-tongue and hart's-hair fern trellising all over the wall just as they do on the sides of churches in the Downs. Think what a joy the sight of them must be to our sturdy peasants pulling hay!"

"Golly!" said the Millstones. "There's nothing like coming to the heart of things for information"; and they returned to the song that all English water-mills have sung from time beyond telling:

There was a jovial miller once Lived on the River Dee, And this the burden of his song For ever used to be.

Then, as fresh grist poured in and dulled the note:

I care for nobody—no not I, And nobody cares for me.

"Even these stones have absorbed something of our atmosphere," said the Grey Cat. "Nine-tenths of the trouble in this world comes from lack of detachment."

"One of your people died from forgetting that, didn't she?" said the Rat.

"One only. The example has sufficed us for generations."

"Ah! but what happened to Don't Care?" the Waters demanded.

"Brutal riding to death of the casual analogy is another mark of provincialism!" The Grey Cat raised her tufted chin. "I am going to sleep. With my social obligations I must snatch rest when I can; but, as our old friend here says, Noblesse oblige.... Pity me! Three functions to-night in the village, and a barn dance across the valley!"

"There's no chance, I suppose, of your looking in on the loft about two. Some of our young people are going to amuse themselves with a new sacque- dance—best white flour only," said the Black Rat.

"I believe I am officially supposed not to countenance that sort of thing, but youth is youth. ... By the way, the humans set my milk-bowl in the loft these days; I hope your youngsters respect it."

"My dear lady," said the Black Rat, bowing, "you grieve me. You hurt me inexpressibly. After all these years, too!"

"A general crush is so mixed—highways and hedges—all that sort of thing —and no one can answer for one's best friends. I never try. So long as mine are amusin' and in full voice, and can hold their own at a tile- party, I'm as catholic as these mixed waters in the dam here!"

"We aren't mixed. We have mixed. We are one now," said the Waters sulkily.

"Still uttering?" said the Cat. "Never mind, here's the Miller coming to shut you off. Ye-es, I have known—four—or five is it?—and twenty leaders of revolt in Faenza.... A little more babble in the dam, a little more noise in the sluice, a little extra splashing on the wheel, and then——"

"They will find that nothing has occurred," said the Black Rat. "The old things persist and survive and are recognised—our old friend here first of all. By the way," he turned toward the Wheel, "I believe we have to congratulate you on your latest honour."

"Profoundly well deserved—even if he had never—as he has—-laboured strenuously through a long life for the amelioration of millkind," said the Cat, who belonged to many tile and outhouse committees. "Doubly deserved, I may say, for the silent and dignified rebuke his existence offers to the clattering, fidgety-footed demands of—er—some people. What form did the honour take?"

"It was," said the Wheel bashfully, "a machine-moulded pinion."

"Pinions! Oh, how heavenly!" the Black Rat sighed. "I never see a bat without wishing for wings."

"Not exactly that sort of pinion," said the Wheel, "but a really ornate circle of toothed iron wheels. Absurd, of course, but gratifying. Mr. Mangles and an associate herald invested me with it personally—on my left rim—the side that you can't see from the mill. I hadn't meant to say anything about it—or the new steel straps round my axles—bright red, you know—to be worn on all occasions—but, without false modesty, I assure you that the recognition cheered me not a little."

"How intensely gratifying!" said the Black Rat. "I must really steal an hour between lights some day and see what they are doing on your left side."

"By the way, have you any light on this recent activity of Mr. Mangles?" the Grey Cat asked. "He seems to be building small houses on the far side of the tail-race. Believe me, I don't ask from any vulgar curiosity."

"It affects our Order," said the Black Rat simply but firmly.

"Thank you," said the Wheel. "Let me see if I can tabulate it properly. Nothing like system in accounts of all kinds. Book! Book! Book! On the side of the Wheel towards the hundred of Burgelstaltone, where till now was a stye of three hogs, Mangles, a freeman, with four villeins, and two carts of two thousand bricks, has a new small house of five yards and a half, and one roof of iron and a floor of cement. Then, now, and afterwards beer in large tankards. And Felden, a stranger, with three villeins and one very great cart, deposits on it one engine of iron and brass and a small iron mill of four feet, and a broad strap of leather. And Mangles, the builder, with two villeins, constructs the floor for the same, and a floor of new brick with wires for the small mill. There are there also chalices filled with iron and water, in number fifty-seven. The whole is valued at one hundred and seventy-four pounds.... I'm sorry I can't make myself clearer, but you can see for yourself."

"Amazingly lucid," said the Cat. She was the more to be admired because the language of Domesday Book is not, perhaps, the clearest medium wherein to describe a small but complete electric-light installation, deriving its power from a water-wheel by means of cogs and gearing.

"See for yourself—by all means, see for yourself," said the Waters, spluttering and choking with mirth.

"Upon my word," said the Black Rat furiously, "I may be at fault, but I wholly fail to perceive where these offensive eavesdroppers—er—come in. We were discussing a matter that solely affected our Order."

Suddenly they heard, as they had heard many times before, the Miller shutting off the water. To the rattle and rumble of the labouring stones succeeded thick silence, punctuated with little drops from the stayed wheel. Then some water-bird in the dam fluttered her wings as she slid to her nest, and the plop of a water-rat sounded like the fall of a log in the water.

"It is all over—it always is all over at just this time. Listen, the Miller is going to bed—as usual. Nothing has occurred," said the Cat.

Something creaked in the house where the pig-styes had stood, as metal engaged on metal with a clink and a burr.

"Shall I turn her on?" cried the Miller.

"Ay," said the voice from the dynamo-house.

"A human in Mangles' new house!" the Rat squeaked.

"What of it?" said the Grey Cat. "Even supposing Mr. Mangles' cats'-meat- coloured hovel ululated with humans, can't you see for yourself—that—?"

There was a solid crash of released waters leaping upon the wheel more furiously than ever, a grinding of cogs, a hum like the hum of a hornet, and then the unvisited darkness of the old mill was scattered by intolerable white light. It threw up every cobweb, every burl and knot in the beams and the floor; till the shadows behind the flakes of rough plaster on the wall lay clear-cut as shadows of mountains on the photographed moon.

"See! See! See!" hissed the Waters in full flood. "Yes, see for yourselves. Nothing has occurred. Can't you see?"

The Rat, amazed, had fallen from his foothold and lay half-stunned on the floor. The Cat, following her instinct, leaped nigh to the ceiling, and with flattened ears and bared teeth backed in a corner ready to fight whatever terror might be loosed on her. But nothing happened. Through the long aching minutes nothing whatever happened, and her wire-brush tail returned slowly to its proper shape.

"Whatever it is," she said at last, "it's overdone. They can never keep it up, you know."

"Much you know," said the Waters. "Over you go, old man. You can take the full head of us now. Those new steel axle-straps of yours can stand anything. Come along, Raven's Gill, Harpenden, Callton Rise, Batten's Ponds, Witches' Spring, all together! Let's show these gentlemen how to work!"

"But—but—I thought it was a decoration. Why—why—why—it only means more work for me!"

"Exactly. You're to supply about sixty eight-candle lights when required. But they won't be all in use at once——"

"Ah! I thought as much," said the Cat. "The reaction is bound to come."

"And" said the Waters, "you will do the ordinary work of the mill as well."

"Impossible!" the old Wheel quivered as it drove. "Aluric never did it— nor Azor, nor Reinbert. Not even William de Warrenne or the Papal Legate. There's no precedent for it. I tell you there's no precedent for working a wheel like this."

"Wait a while! We're making one as fast as we can. Aluric and Co. are dead. So's the Papal Legate. You've no notion how dead they are, but we're here—the Waters of Five Separate Systems. We're just as interesting as Domesday Book. Would you like to hear about the land-tenure in Trott's Wood? It's squat-right, chiefly." The mocking Waters leaped one over the other, chuckling and chattering profanely.

"In that hundred Jenkins, a tinker, with one dog—unis canis—holds, by the Grace of God and a habit he has of working hard, unam hidam—a large potato patch. Charmin' fellow, Jenkins. Friend of ours. Now, who the dooce did Jenkins keep? ... In the hundred of Callton is one charcoal-burner irreligiosissimus homo—a bit of a rip—but a thorough sportsman. Ibi est ecclesia. Non multum. Not much of a church, quia because, episcopus the Vicar irritated the Nonconformists tunc et post et modo —then and afterwards and now—until they built a cut-stone Congregational chapel with red brick facings that did not return itself—defendebat se —at four thousand pounds."

"Charcoal-burners, vicars, schismatics, and red brick facings," groaned the Wheel. "But this is sheer blasphemy. What waters have they let in upon me?"

"Floods from the gutters. Faugh, this light is positively sickening!" said the Cat, rearranging her fur.

"We come down from the clouds or up from the springs, exactly like all other waters everywhere. Is that what's surprising you?" sang the Waters.

"Of course not. I know my work if you don't. What I complain of is your lack of reverence and repose. You've no instinct of deference towards your betters—your heartless parody of the Sacred volume (the Wheel meant Domesday Book)—proves it."

"Our betters?" said the Waters most solemnly. "What is there in all this dammed race that hasn't come down from the clouds, or——"

"Spare me that talk, please," the Wheel persisted. "You'd never understand. It's the tone—your tone that we object to."

"Yes. It's your tone," said the Black Rat, picking himself up limb by limb.

"If you thought a trifle more about the work you're supposed to do, and a trifle less about your precious feelings, you'd render a little more duty in return for the power vested in you—we mean wasted on you," the Waters replied.

"I have been some hundreds of years laboriously acquiring the knowledge which you see fit to challenge so light-heartedly," the Wheel jarred.

"Challenge him! Challenge him!" clamoured the little waves riddling down through the tail-race. "As well now as later. Take him up!"

The main mass of the Waters plunging on the Wheel shocked that well-bolted structure almost into box-lids by saying: "Very good. Tell us what you suppose yourself to be doing at the present moment."

"Waiving the offensive form of your question, I answer, purely as a matter of courtesy, that I am engaged in the trituration of farinaceous substances whose ultimate destination it would be a breach of the trust reposed in me to reveal."

"Fiddle!" said the Waters. "We knew it all along! The first direct question shows his ignorance of his own job. Listen, old thing. Thanks to us, you are now actuating a machine of whose construction you know nothing, that that machine may, over wires of whose ramifications you are, by your very position, profoundly ignorant, deliver a power which you can never realise, to localities beyond the extreme limits of your mental horizon, with the object of producing phenomena which in your wildest dreams (if you ever dream) you could never comprehend. Is that clear, or would you like it all in words of four syllables?"

"Your assumptions are deliciously sweeping, but may I point out that a decent and—the dear old Abbot of Wilton would have put it in his resonant monkish Latin much better than I can—a scholarly reserve, does not necessarily connote blank vacuity of mind on all subjects."

"Ah, the dear old Abbot of Wilton," said the Rat sympathetically, as one nursed in that bosom. "Charmin' fellow—thorough scholar and gentleman. Such a pity!"

"Oh, Sacred Fountains!" the Waters were fairly boiling. "He goes out of his way to expose his ignorance by triple bucketfuls. He creaks to high Heaven that he is hopelessly behind the common order of things! He invites the streams of Five Watersheds to witness his su-su-su-pernal incompetence, and then he talks as though there were untold reserves of knowledge behind him that he is too modest to bring forward. For a bland, circular, absolutely sincere impostor, you're a miracle, O Wheel!"

"I do not pretend to be anything more than an integral portion of an accepted and not altogether mushroom institution."

"Quite so," said the Waters. "Then go round—hard——"

"To what end?" asked the Wheel.

"Till a big box of tanks in your house begins to fizz and fume—gassing is the proper word."

"It would be," said the Cat, sniffing.

"That will show that your accumulators are full. When the accumulators are exhausted, and the lights burn badly, you will find us whacking you round and round again."

"The end of life as decreed by Mangles and his creatures is to go whacking round and round for ever," said the Cat.

"In order," the Rat said, "that you may throw raw and unnecessary illumination upon all the unloveliness in the world. Unloveliness which we shall—er—have always with us. At the same time you will riotously neglect the so-called little but vital graces that make up Life."

"Yes, Life," said the Cat, "with its dim delicious half-tones and veiled indeterminate distances. Its surprisals, escapes, encounters, and dizzying leaps—its full-throated choruses in honour of the morning star, and its melting reveries beneath the sun-warmed wall."

"Oh, you can go on the tiles, Pussalina, just the same as usual," said the laughing Waters. "We sha'n't interfere with you."

"On the tiles, forsooth!" hissed the Cat.

"Well, that's what it amounts to," persisted the Waters. "We see a good deal of the minor graces of life on our way down to our job."

"And—but I fear I speak to deaf ears—do they never impress you?" said the Wheel.

"Enormously," said the Waters. "We have already learned six refined synonyms for loafing."

"But (here again I feel as though preaching in the wilderness) it never occurs to you that there may exist some small difference between the wholly animal—ah—rumination of bovine minds and the discerning, well- apportioned leisure of the finer type of intellect?"

"Oh, yes. The bovine mind goes to sleep under a hedge and makes no bones about it when it's shouted at. We've seen that—in haying-time—all along the meadows. The finer type is wide awake enough to fudge up excuses for shirking, and mean enough to get stuffy when its excuses aren't accepted. Turn over!"

"But, my good people, no gentleman gets stuffy as you call it. A certain proper pride, to put it no higher, forbids—-"

"Nothing that he wants to do if he really wants to do it. Get along! What are you giving us? D'you suppose we've scoured half heaven in the clouds, and half earth in the mists, to be taken in at this time of the day by a bone-idle, old hand-quern of your type?"

"It is not for me to bandy personalities with you. I can only say that I simply decline to accept the situation."

"Decline away. It doesn't make any odds. They'll probably put in a turbine if you decline too much."

"What's a turbine?" said the Wheel, quickly.

"A little thing you don't see, that performs surprising revolutions. But you won't decline. You'll hang on to your two nice red-strapped axles and your new machine-moulded pinions like—a—like a leech on a lily stem! There's centuries of work in your old bones if you'd only apply yourself to it; and, mechanically, an overshot wheel with this head of water is about as efficient as a turbine."

"So in future I am to be considered mechanically? I have been painted by at least five Royal Academicians."

"Oh, you can be painted by five hundred when you aren't at work, of course. But while you are at work you'll work. You won't half-stop and think and talk about rare plants and dicky-birds and farinaceous fiduciary interests. You'll continue to revolve, and this new head of water will see that you do so continue."

"It is a matter on which it would be exceedingly ill-advised to form a hasty or a premature conclusion. I will give it my most careful consideration," said the Wheel.

"Please do," said the Waters gravely. "Hullo! Here's the Miller again."

The Cat coiled herself in a picturesque attitude on the softest corner of a sack, and the Rat without haste, yet certainly without rest, slipped behind the sacking as though an appointment had just occurred to him.

In the doorway, with the young Engineer, stood the Miller grinning amazedly.

"Well—well—well! 'tis true-ly won'erful. An' what a power o' dirt! It come over me now looking at these lights, that I've never rightly seen my own mill before. She needs a lot bein' done to her."

"Ah! I suppose one must make oneself moderately agreeable to the baser sort. They have their uses. This thing controls the dairy." The Cat, pincing on her toes, came forward and rubbed her head against the Miller's knee.

"Ay, you pretty puss," he said, stooping. "You're as big a cheat as the rest of 'em that catch no mice about me. A won'erful smooth-skinned, rough-tongued cheat you be. I've more than half a mind——"

"She does her work well," said the Engineer, pointing to where the Rat's beady eyes showed behind the sacking. "Cats and Rats livin' together— see?"

"Too much they do—too long they've done. I'm sick and tired of it. Go and take a swim and larn to find your own vittles honest when you come out, Pussy."

"My word!" said the Waters, as a sprawling Cat landed all unannounced in the centre of the tail-race. "Is that you, Mewsalina? You seem to have been quarrelling with your best friend. Get over to the left. It's shallowest there. Up on that alder-root with all four paws. Good-night!"

"You'll never get any they rats," said the Miller, as the young Engineer struck wrathfully with his stick at the sacking. "They're not the common sort. They're the old black English sort."

"Are they, by Jove? I must catch one to stuff, some day."

* * * * *

Six months later, in the chill of a January afternoon, they were letting in the Waters as usual.

"Come along! It's both gears this evening," said the Wheel, kicking joyously in the first rush of the icy stream. "There's a heavy load of grist just in from Lamber's Wood. Eleven miles it came in an hour and a half in our new motor-lorry, and the Miller's rigged five new five-candle lights in his cow-stables. I'm feeding 'em to-night. There's a cow due to calve. Oh, while I think of it, what's the news from Callton Rise?"

"The waters are finding their level as usual—but why do you ask?" said the deep outpouring Waters.

"Because Mangles and Felden and the Miller are talking of increasing the plant here and running a saw-mill by electricity. I was wondering whether we——"

"I beg your pardon," said the Waters chuckling. "What did you say?"

"Whether we, of course, had power enough for the job. It will be a biggish contract. There's all Harpenden Brook to be considered and Batten's Ponds as well, and Witches' Fountain, and the Churt's Hawd system.

"We've power enough for anything in the world," said the Waters. "The only question is whether you could stand the strain if we came down on you full head."

"Of course I can," said the Wheel. "Mangles is going to turn me into a set of turbines—beauties."

"Oh—er—I suppose it's the frost that has made us a little thick-headed, but to whom are we talking?" asked the amazed Waters.

"To me—the Spirit of the Mill, of course."

"Not to the old Wheel, then?"

"I happen to be living in the old Wheel just at present. When the turbines are installed I shall go and live in them. What earthly difference does it make?"

"Absolutely none," said the Waters, "in the earth or in the waters under the earth. But we thought turbines didn't appeal to you."

"Not like turbines? Me? My dear fellows, turbines are good for fifteen hundred revolutions a minute—and with our power we can drive 'em at full speed. Why, there's nothing we couldn't grind or saw or illuminate or heat with a set of turbines! That's to say if all the Five Watersheds are agreeable."

"Oh, we've been agreeable for ever so long."

"Then why didn't you tell me?"

"Don't know. Suppose it slipped our memory."

The Waters were holding themselves in for fear of bursting with mirth.

"How careless of you! You should keep abreast of the age, my dear fellows. We might have settled it long ago, if you'd only spoken. Yes, four good turbines and a neat brick penstock—eh? This old Wheel's absurdly out of date."

"Well," said the Cat, who after a little proud seclusion had returned to her place impenitent as ever. "Praised be Pasht and the Old Gods, that whatever may have happened I, at least, have preserved the Spirit of the Mill!"

She looked round as expecting her faithful ally, the Black Rat; but that very week the Engineer had caught and stuffed him, and had put him in a glass case; he being a genuine old English black rat. That breed, the report says, is rapidly diminishing before the incursions of the brown variety.

THE END