posted up in the village, and next day a telephone message informed us that a suspicious red-headed character answering to the specification was loitering near the "Waggon and Horses," and was being kept under observation. Miss Ropes and Haynes went off to arrest him, but hardly had they disappeared down the drive when Philip in person appeared on the lawn.

This gave our handy man, James, his chance. James simply loves to make himself useful. If anybody wants anything done he can always rely on James to do it by a more complicated method and with more trouble to himself than the ordinary man could conceive. His education is generally understood to have consisted of an exhaustive study of the "How-To-Make" column in the Boys' Own Paper, completed by a short course of domestic engineering under Mr. W. HEATH ROBINSON.

We first knew that he had undertaken the case when we heard his voice excitedly telling us not to move. Naturally we all turned to look at him. He had got a butterfly net from somewhere and was lying flat on his tummy and whistling seductively an alleged imitation of Philip's usual remark. Philip, about thirty yards away, was eyeing him with contempt.

Suddenly James gathered his limbs beneath him, sprang up, galloped ten yards and flung himself down again, panting loudly. Philip, surprised and alarmed, took refuge in a tree, whereupon James abandoned the stalk (blaming us for having frightened Philip away) and retired to think of another scheme.

Soon he reappeared with some pieces of bamboo and a square yard of white calico, sat down solemnly in the verandah and began to sew.

"Is it a white flag? Are you going to parley with him, or what?" asked Ansell.

"Trap," replied James shortly.

We watched with silent interest while he got more and more entangled in his contrivance.

"I hope Philip'll know how to work the machine," said I, "because I'm sure I shouldn't."

At last it was finished, and James took it out and set it. He disguised it (rather thinly) with half-a-dozen oak leaves and baited it with a lot of caterpillars, and retired behind a tree with the end of a long piece of string in his hand.

"When Philip walks up to the trap," he explained, "he starts eating the caterpillars. I pull the string, and he is caught in the calico. It's called a bow-net."

He waited patiently for an hour-and-a-half, except for a short break while he rounded up the caterpillars, who, not knowing the rules, had walked away. Then we took the luncheon interval; scores, James (in play) 0; Philip 0.

"I don't see," said Ansell soon after the resumption, "why poor old James should do all the work. Let's all help."

We began by posting an appeal in prominent spots about the grounds:—

PHILIP—If this should meet the eye of. Return to your sorrowing family, when all will be forgotten and forgiven and no questions asked.

Next we festooned the estate with helpful notices, such as "This way to the Trap —>" and "Caterpillar Buffet first turn to Left." One of the peacocks was observed to be reading this last with great interest, so we added a few more notices for the special benefit of unauthorised food-hogs: "Free List Suspended until Further Notice," and "Eat Less Worm."

At tea-time Philip was still holding coldly aloof. But while we were indoors Bennett, the gardener, caught him by some simple artifice beneath James's notice. I found him putting the truant back in his cage.

"Don't do that, Bennett," I said. "Put him in Mr. James's trap. He's had a lot of trouble making that trap, and it's a pity to waste it."

Bennett grinned a toothless grin at me and did some dialect, which I understood to mean that I might do as I liked, but that he (Bennett) was not going to catch no more birds for us.

Hardly had I put Philip in the trap when James emerged.

"Good Lord!" he shouted, "it's done it! He's in!"

He dashed on to the lawn, wild with joy. Probably it was the first time any of his devices had succeeded.

"Aha, my beauty," he cried, slipping his hand under the calico. "We've got you safe, have we?"

We had not. There was a flash of red and grey, and the outraged Philip, minus a tail feather, sought the sanctuary of the woods.

He is still absent without leave at the time of writing.

Manager of Labour Exchange (to man whom he has sent to a job for "an intelligent labourer to assist the demonstrator of tanks; one who can hold his tongue about the work"). "WELL, MIKE, HOW'S EVERYTHING GOING?"

Mike (confidentially). "FAITH, BUT THEY'RE A DEAD FAILURE, SORR. WHY, THREE WEEKS I'VE BEEN ON THIM TANKS AND NIVER WAN HAS RIZ OFF THE GROUND YET."

FURTHER REMINISCENCES.

(With acknowledgments to Mr. GEORGE R. SIMS).

We come now to the beginning of the sixties. I well remember, early in the summer of one of them, Gentleman Dick—we called him this because his father had been a tramp, and, although he scarcely justified the maternal strain (his mother had been a washerwoman), he was certainly to all appearances his father's son—rushing in to tell me that "Blue Satin," the prize bull bitch belonging to the proprietor of that well-known tavern—public-houses were scarcely known in those days—"The Seven Sisters," had given birth to a son.

This was an opportunity too good to be missed, and in spite of the bitter cold I hurried off with Gentleman Dick, who already had acquired no small reputation for his dexterity in hanging on to the backs of cabs, and ultimately secured "Albert the Good." If I had to christen a pup now I should naturally call him "Jellicoe the Brave." "Albert the Good" scarcely lived up to his name and eventually I had to get rid of him. He bit a piece out of a constable's leg. Sir J—— B——, the presiding magistrate at Bow Street, was most charming about it however, and gave me a seat on the bench during the constable's evidence.

I remember it especially because it was the day following this I was in at the death, when Ebenezer Smith, the Mayfair murderer, came to his end. He made an excellent breakfast of ham and eggs just before his execution, the Governor was good enough to tell me, and was collected enough even to grumble at the age of one of the eggs.

D—— L——, the famous comedian, was very funny always about his eggs. I remember he had an idea that if you whistled to the hen before the egg was laid the result tasted better when you ate it. He wanted me to write a comic song for him on these lines, but the idea never came to anything. I was very busy at the time collecting royalties. The thousandth performance of The Merry Murderers had just taken place, and at last I felt free to shake the dust of the City from my feet and devote myself to literature.

It was just about this time that Jim Peters became the idol of England through knocking out the Black Bully—a coloured bruiser with an immense capacity for eating beef—in a couple of rounds. Peters was one of the best of fellows when he wasn't drunk, and could wink one eye in a manner I have never seen equalled by that later idol of the British public, M—— L——.

Alas! poor Peters from fat purses fell to thin times. He petered out, in fact, as far as the Mile End workhouse, where I discovered him one sad day, and was ultimately able to get him married to the lady who sold winkles on the pavement just outside. Her previous pitch had been just outside the Hoxton Theatre, but she told me she found Mile End more disposed to her wares. The marriage turned out a very happy one,