bone!

He started systematically with the rose beds, but met with no success. After that he tried two or three shrubberies without avail, and then embarked on a frantic but thorough excavation of the tennis lawn. We were taking tea on the lawn at the time, and our attention was first drawn to Excalibur's bereavement by a temporary but unshakable conviction on his part that the bone was buried immediately underneath the tea table.

As the tennis lawn was fast beginning to resemble a golf course we locked Excalibur up in the washhouse, where his hyena-like howls rent the air for the rest of the evening, penetrating even to the dining-room. This was particularly unfortunate, because we were having a dinner party in honor of a neighbor who had recently come to the district, no less a personage, in fact, than the new lord-lieutenant of the county and his lady. Stella was naturally anxious that there should be no embarrassments on such an occasion, and it distressed her to think that these people should imagine that we kept a private torture chamber on the premises.

However, dinner passed off quite successfully and we adjourned to the drawing-room. It was a chilly September evening and Lady Wickham was accommodated with a seat by the fire in a large armchair, with a cushion at her back. When the gentlemen came in Eileen sang to us. Fortunately the drawing-room is out of range of the washhouse.

During Eileen's first song I sat by Lady Wickham. Her expression was one of patrician calm and well-bred repose, but it seemed to me she was not looking quite comfortable. I was not feeling quite comfortable myself. The atmosphere seemed a trifle oppressive: perhaps we had done wrong in having a fire after all. Lady Wickham appeared to notice it too. She sat very upright, fanning herself mechanically, and seemed disinclined to lean back in her chair.

After the song was finished I said:

"I am afraid you are not quite comfortable, Lady Wickham. Let me get you a larger cushion."

"Thank you," said Lady Wickham, "the cushion I have is delightfully comfortable; but I think there is something hard behind it."

Apologetically I plucked away the cushion. Lady Wickham was right; there was something behind it.

It was Excalibur's bone!

IV

A walk along the village street was always a great event for Excalibur. Still, it must have contained many humiliating moments for one of his sensitive disposition; for he was always pathetically anxious to make friends with other dogs, but was rarely successful. Little dogs merely bit his legs and big dogs cut him dead.

I think this was why he usually commenced his morning round by calling on a rabbit. The rabbit lived in a hutch in a yard at the end of a passage between two cottages, the first turning on the right after you entered the village, and Excalibur always dived down this at the earliest opportunity. It was no use for Eileen, who usually took him out on these occasions, to endeavor to hold him back. Either Excalibur called on the rabbit by himself or Eileen went with him; there was no other alternative.

Arrived at the hutch, Excalibur wagged his tail and contemplated the rabbit with his usual air of vacuous benevolence. The rabbit made not the faintest response, but continued to munch green feed, twitching its nose in a superior manner. Finally, when it could endure Excalibur's admiring inspection and hard breathing no longer, it turned its back and retired into its bedroom.

Excalibur's next call was usually at the butcher's shop, where he was presented with a specially selected and quite unsalable fragment of meat. He then crossed the road to the baker's, where he purchased a halfpenny bun, for which his escort was expected to pay. After that he walked from shop to shop, wherever he was taken, with great docility and enjoyment; for he was a gregarious animal and had a friend behind or underneath almost every counter in the village. Men, women, babies, kittens, even ducks—they were all one to him.

At one time Eileen had endeavored to teach him a few simple accomplishments, such as begging for food, dying for his country, and carrying parcels. She was unsuccessful in all three instances. Excalibur on his hind legs stood about five feet six, and when he fell from that eminence, as he invariably did when he tried to beg, he usually broke something. He was hampered, too, by inability to distinguish one order from another. More than once he narrowly escaped with his life through mistaking an urgent appeal to come to heel out of the way of an approaching automobile for a command to die for his country in the middle of the road.

As for educating him to carry parcels, a single attempt was sufficient. The parcel in question contained a miscellaneous assortment of articles from the grocer's, including lard, soap, and safety matches. It was securely tied up, and the grocer kindly attached it by a short length of string to a wooden clothespin, in order to make it easier for Excalibur to carry. They set off home.

Excalibur was most apologetic about it afterward, besides being extremely unwell; but he had no idea, he explained to Eileen, that anything put into his mouth was not meant to be eaten. He then tendered the clothespin and some mangled brown paper, with an air of profound abasement. After that no further attempts at compulsory education were undertaken.

It was his daily walk with Eileen, however, which introduced Excalibur to life—life in its broadest and most romantic sense. As I was not privileged to be present at the opening incident of this episode, or at most of its subsequent developments, the direct conduct of this narrative here passes out of my hands.

One sunny morning in July a young man in clerical attire sat breakfasting in his rooms at Mrs. Tice's. Mrs. Tice's establishment was situated on the village street and Mrs. Tice was in the habit of letting her ground floor to lodgers of impeccable respectability.

It was half-past eleven, which is a late hour for the clergy to breakfast; but this young man appeared to be suffering from no qualms of conscience on the subject. He was making an excellent breakfast and reading the Henley results with a mixture of rapture and longing.

He had just removed the "Sportsman" from the convenient buttress of the teapot and substituted "Punch" when he became aware that day had turned to night. Looking up he perceived that his open window, which was rather small and of the casement variety, was completely blocked by a huge, shapeless, and opaque mass. Next moment the mass resolved itself into an animal of enormous size and surprising appearance, which fell heavily into the room, and

Five minutes later the window framed another picture—this time a girl of twenty, white-clad and wearing a powder-blue felt hat, caught up on one side by a silver buckle which twinkled in the hot morning sun. The curate started to his feet. Excalibur, who was now lying on the