or come on Snow White and her seven dwarfs, that is only because you must have taken the wrong turning after you came through the kissing-gate at the bottom of Lovers' Lane. I am a native of Cotterham, and in my more reflective moments I wonder why such an idyllic place should have produced anything so unromantic as myself, His Majesty's Deputy Assistant Acting Inspector for All Sorts of Unexpected Explosives. Cotterham still has a large place in my affections, and it gave me a considerable shock the other day to get a letter from the Squire, who is an old friend, asking me down for a week-end, and adding, "You can do a little professional job for me too. You really will be interested to see what splendid work is being done here in your line of fire. The output is some of the best in the district. But there has been trouble lately and the leaders of the two biggest shifts were found to have appropriated a substantial part of the output to their own uses. I shall rely on you to straighten things out and suggest the right penalties."

So they were even making munitions in Cotterham. I conjured up visions of interminable rows of huts, of thousands of overalled workers swamping Plough Lane, trampling the Green brown, scaring the geese, obliterating the immemorial shape of Leg-o'-Mutton Common by a mushroom township, laying Down Wood low, and coming to me with some miserable tale of petty pilfering for my adjustment. I must own I got out of the train at Muddlehampstead and into the station fly feeling distinctly low-spirited. It was some consolation to find that the railway still stopped seven miles short of my village, though I reflected gloomily that the place itself was doubtless a network of light railways by this time. We bowled along in stately fashion up Plough Lane and past Halfpenny Cross to the Manor House with its thatched roof and Virginia-creeper all over the porch. The Squire carried me off at once for the professional part of my visit, but we fell to talking of fishing, which had been good, and cubbing, which had been bad, and were on to Leg-o'-Mutton Common before I remembered to speak of munitions.

"Not much sign of war here," I said with a relieved sigh. "I was afraid they'd have spoilt the dear old heath for a certainty. Only don't say it's Down Wood they've gone to, for that'd be more than I could stand. I thought there were fairies there long after I ought to have been a hard-headed young man of six, and if they've gone and desecrated that wood with factories—"

The Squire smiled.

"I don't think I should worry. Amongst all your Unexpected Explosives do you happen to condescend to have heard of the gentle horse-chestnut and the school-children that collect them? Here are the two delinquents I wrote to you about, and we've caught them in the act. Just look at them wasting the precious things."

Two small boys were playing at conkers, two small boys with very earnest faces and grubby clothes which never figured in KATE GREENAWAY'S pictures, wasting precious material which five-and-thirty other scholars were diligently collecting and stuffing into sacks. I ought to have given them a lecture on patriotism—the army behind the Army. But we each of us keep one childish passion untamed, even if we are unromantic old bachelors, and I, His Majesty's Deputy Assistant Acting Inspector for All Sorts of Unexpected Explosives and his very loyal subject, who have lived for nearly half-a-century of Octobers in London town—I borrowed the bigger conker and systematically and in deadly earnest I fought and defeated the other small boy.

They say that treason never succeeds; so perhaps I can't be a traitor after all.

THE UNDISMAYED.

In a world of insecurity and change it is good to have one bedrock certainty upon which the mind can rest. Thrones totter and fall; Commanders-in-chief are superseded; Admirals of the High Fleet are displaced; in politics leaders come and go and reputations pass; in ordinary life a thousand mutations are visible. But amid all this flux there remains mercifully one resolute piece of routine that nothing can alter. Whatever may be happening elsewhere in the world—mutinies in the German Navy, revolutions in Russia, advances in France, advances in Flanders—Leicester Square keeps its head. Armageddon may be turning the world upside down, but it cannot cause those old antagonists, STEVENSON and REECE, to cease their perpetual contest; and if the War lasts another ten years you will read in The Times of October 17th, 1927, a paragraph to the effect that "at the close of play yesterday in the billiard match of 16,000 points up between Stevenson and Reece, at the Grand Hall, Leicester Square, the scores were: Reece (in play), 4,676; Stevenson, 2,837."

NOT CANNIBALS AFTER ALL.

"The first contingent of the American troops brought food for six months, and hence the fears of the peasants in France lest they should be eaten up are groundless."—Adelaide Advertiser.

"If the public continue to spend the same sum of money on bread at 9d. as they did when it was 1s., it is easy to see that the consumption will rise by a quarter or 25 per cent."—Glasgow Evening News.

We are always timid about questioning a Scotsman's arithmetic, but we make the increase a third, or 33-1/3 per cent.

He (connoisseur of wines). "WE STAYED SEVERAL DAYS AT AN INN IN A LITTLE GLOUCESTERSHIRE VILLAGE, AS WE FOUND THEY HAD SUCH AN EXCELLENT CELLAR."

She. "REALLY! I HAD NO IDEA THE RAIDERS HAD GOT SO FAR WEST AS THAT."

CROSS-TALK WITH PETHERTON.

Petherton and I have just emerged from another bombardment. Certain correspondence in The Surbury Gazette and North Herts Courier gave me a welcome excuse for firing what I may term a sighting shot. I wrote to my genial neighbour as follows:—

DEAR MR. PETHERTON,—No doubt you have seen the recent letters in the local paper anent the remains of the old Cross, which are at once an ornament to Castle Street, Surbury, and a standing menace to the peace of mind of the local antiquarians.

I am exceedingly interested in the matter myself and feel that the views of one who, I am sure, adds a wide knowledge of archæology to the long list of his accomplishments, would be both interesting and instructive to myself and (if you would allow your views to be published) to our little community in general.

If therefore you will write and let me know your opinion on the matter I shall take it as a friendly and cousinly (vide certain eighteenth-century documents in the Record Office) act.

Yours sincerely,

HENRY J. FORDYCE.

Petherton replied with a whizz-bang as thus:—

SIR,—I have read the idiotic correspondence to which you refer, and am informed that you are the author of the screed which appeared in last Saturday's issue of the paper. If my informant is correct as to the authorship of the letter I can only say it is a pity that, with apparently no knowledge of the subject, you should venture into print. Anyone enjoying the least acquaintance with the rudiments of English history would be perfectly aware that the remains have no connection with QUEEN ELEANOR whatever. The whereabouts of all the crosses put up to her memory are quite well known to archæologists.

Yours faithfully,

FREDERICK PETHERTON.

I replied with light artillery:—

DEAR PETHERTON,—Yours re the late Mrs. EDWARD PLANTAGENET to hand.

Though not a professed archæologist I do know something of the ruin in question, having