out of shouting range. He then pulled up the window, trod on my foot, sat on my lap and eventually came to rest on the seat opposite me.

It was a small man, red of head and bright of eye. He wore his cap at the back of his head, so as to exhibit to an admiring world a carefully-cultured curl of the "quiff" variety, which was plastered across his forehead with a great expenditure of grease. His tie was a ready-made bow of shot-colours, red, green, blue and purple, and from his glittering watch-chain hung many fanciful medals, like soles upon a line.

"Brother-in-law to me," he remarked, jerking his thumb towards the back-rushing lights of Exeter.

"Who?" I inquired.

"That young feller I was talking to just now. Didn't you see me talking to a young feller?"

"Oh, yes, I believe I did hear you talking to somebody."

"Well, him. Married a sister to me, so he's my brother-in-law, ain't he?"

"Certainly."

"Well, you're wrong then. He's only a half-brother-in-law, because she is only a half-sister to me, her ma marrying my old man. Understand?"

I said I did and pulled up my rug as a signal that I was going to sleep and the conversation was at an end.

"Anyhow, whatever he is, he's good enough for her."

I remarked that that was most satisfactory and closed my eyes.

He drew out a yellow packet of cigarettes, selected one and held them in my direction. I declined and again closed my eyes.

"Very good, please yourself, it's one more for little Willie. All I can say is that you're foolish not taking a good fag when it don't cost you nothing. You don't catch me refusing a free fag even when I don't want to smoke. I takes it and puts it in my cap for when I do. Pounds I've saved that way, pounds and pounds."

He lit his limp tube of paper and mystery, stamped out the match and spat deliberately on the floor.

"See me do that?"

I nodded with as much disgust as I could contrive.

"Know what them notices say I can get for that? Fined or imprisoned."

He paused for me to marvel at his daring.

"Think I'm mad to take risks like that, don't cher? Well, I aren't neither. They couldn't catch me out, not they."

He brushed some ash off his lap on to mine and winked sagely.

"Suppose the guard was to come in here and start fining and imprisoning me for it, do you know what I'd do? I'd swear you did it."

"But I should deny it," I retorted hotly.

"Of course you would, old chum, and I shouldn't blame you neither, but you wouldn't stand no chance against me"—he leaned forward and tapped me on the knee as though to emphasize his words—"I could lie your life away."

He sank back in his seat, his face aglow with conscious superiority. The clamour of the wheels increased as if they were live things burning with the fever of some bloodthirsty hunt.

"Firing her up," said the red man; "always racing time, these passenger wagons. It's a dog's life and no blooming error." He prodded my foot with his. "I said 'it's a dog's life and no error.'"

"What is?" I growled.

"Engine-driving, of course. I'm on the road myself. Goods-pushing just now, but I've been on the expresses off and on, though it don't suit me—too much flaring hurry."

He rattled off into technicalities of his trade, embroidered with tales of hair-bristling adventures and escapes.

"Yes, old chum, there's more in our trade than what most fat-headed passengers thinks. As long as an accident don't occur they don't know what trouble we've been to avoiding of it. I've a good mind to give 'em a smash-up now and again just to teach 'em gratitood. F'instance, me and me mate was running a local down Ilfracombe way last week when what d'you think we runned into?"

"Ilfracombe?" I hazarded sleepily.

"An old cow! Now what d' you think of that?"

"It was so much the worse for the coo," I quoted.

"What say?"

"It was so much the worse for the cow."

"Worse for the cow?"

"So George Stephenson said, and he invented the locomotive and ought to know, you'll admit."

The little man stared at me, his mouth open; for once he seemed bereft of words. We had slowed to a momentary stop, in a small station and pulled out again before he regained control of his tongue, then he broke loose.

"No, I don't admit it neither. I don't care if your friend George invented the moon, he talks like a fool, and you can tell him so from me."

"I can't, unfortunately; he's—"

"A chap that talks disrespectful and ignorant of cows like that didn't oughter be allowed to live. A cow is one of the worstest things you can run up against. I'd rather run into a row of brick houses than one of them nasty leathery old devils; and you can hand the information to your chum George."

"I tell you I can't; he's—"

"Ask any driver or fireman on the road, and if he don't slip you one with a shovel for your withering ignorance he'll tell you just what I'm telling you now. Yes, you and your funny friend."

"Look here, George Stephenson has been—"

"Let your funny friend try running into a cow just for 'speriment. Just let him try it once. They tangle up in your bogies, all slippery bones and hide, slither along with you a yard or two, and the next thing you know is you're over an embankment and your widder is putting in for insurance. Tell your pal George from me."

The brakes ground on and the lights of a station flickered past the windows.

"My gosh!" exclaimed the red-headed man, springing to his feet, "this is Cullumpton, and I ought to have got out at the station before." He wrestled with the door-handle. "And it's all through sitting here listening to your everlasting damfool chatter about you and your friend George."

"Who died forty years before I was born," said I. "Good night."

Patlander.

Robinson. "It's about time you chaps started to do something. Hard work never killed anybody."

Mendicant. "You are mistaken, Sir. I lost three wives through it."

WIZARDS: KLINGSOR AND ANOTHER.

"Another Parsifal ought to be written from the angle of Klingsor, who was an enlightened Arabian, physician, scientist and probably Aristotelian.... The Knights, and Wagner with them, call him a wizard, which was a crude mediæval way of 'slanging' any man who preferred knowledge to superstition."

This remarkable utterance by the musical critic of The Daily Mail in the issue of February 25th has created a sensation in the political world fully equal to that caused by the announcement of Mr. Asquith's return for Paisley. Scientific and artistic circles have also been deeply moved.

Sir Philip Sassoon, Mr. Lloyd George's new secretary, interviewed by our representative, said that the tribute to his chief was all the more welcome considering its source. His only criticism was that, instead of calling the charge of wizardry a "crude mediæval" mode of invective, he should prefer to style it an ultra-modern application of the art of obloquy.

Sir Oliver Lodge, in a wireless message from New York, entirely approved of The Daily Mail's reading of Klingsor's character. He was clearly a scientist and a spiritualist of remarkable attainments. The defection of Kundry to the side of the Knights was a sad instance—but not without modern parallels—of the unrelenting pressure exerted on weak women by the zealots of orthodoxy.

Mr. A.B.