'No matter,' again said Montagu fatally, he has his umbrella;' and with this he started for the railway-station in a hansom.

CHAPTER IX.

TOBY, following him in another hansom, altered the arrangements of his reversible ulster so that it looked like a cassock, made himself up with a few sticks of crayon gras and a hand-glass, discharged the cab at the corner before the station, and, following close on Montagu's heels, took his ticket in a curatic fashion for Redhill. He was so absorbed in the change that he scarcely noticed a person who seemed, with offensive obviousness, to be a Railway Director, and who stumbled against him in his eagerness to secure a ticket for Portsmouth by the same train which was to carry Montagu and Toby to Redhill.

Montagu got out at Redhill.

So did Toby.

So did the Railway Director.

Montagu went straight to the refreshment-room.

So did Toby.

So did the Railway Director.

Montagu was met by a large, jovial, well-looking man.

'Why, damme,' said Toby, surprised into speaking half aloud, that's the other one!'

'Oh, oh, oh!' said the obvious Railway Director to

himself with three different intonations; 'then this, as I thought, is no curate; and now I have them all.'

'Snowle,' said Montagu pathetically, in an undertone, of which not a syllable was lost by the clerk and the Director, 'see what you have made of me!'

'Ho! ho!' laughed Snowle, and his laughter seemed to shake the station. You would have it so, boy. But, indeed, I am of opinion that it has gone far enough. Waiter! two brandies-and-sodas!'

The two friends drank the two brandies-and-sodas in solemn silence. The effect upon Montagu was remarkable. He grew suddenly cheerful, and proceeded to relate to his elder friend (at great length) all that had happened since their parting.

Toby, hunched up in a corner with a Bath bun, listened with growing astonishment. When Montagu had finished, he rose, and said to himself: 'So that's it. When one drank soda, the other was to drink brandy. When the other drank brandy, the one was to drink soda. Strange but I must hurry to tell my patron.'

He was about to leave the refreshment-room, when the Director stopped him quietly, but in a masterful manner, saying, with a slight foreign accent:

'So this is how we avoid our old friends ?'

'Old friends?' said Toby, aghast.

'Surely,' replied the Director, 'you have not forgotten Pâlot, of the Sûreté ? It is for that little forgery I want you-the extradition warrant is all in order.'

'O Lord!' said Toby, and collapsed.

Before he had come to himself enough to convince the French detective that he had made a mistake, the two friends had disappeared.

The Frenchman, however, was equal to the occasion. Like all good policemen he had a clue, and, armed with this weapon, he and Toby followed Snowles and Montagu to the house of the Cantilenes, where, by a happy chance, the dyer happened to be calling.

Montagu then, for the second time, related (again at great length) all that had happened.

Miss Cantilene accepted the explanation, and him. The dyer gave a learned address, and took Montagu into partnership.

Toby became a variety entertainer.

Pâlot returned to Paris, and wrote an article for the Figaro, explaining, with illustrations, that in England all clerks are amateur detectives of great skill in disguise. Snowle laughed, and went back to his countryhouse.

W. H. P.

OF HE AND SHE.

IN lonely slumber lay the earliest He,
While from his rib was framed a lesser She.
Lo! now the miracle reversed we see:
From She unconscious springs a lesser He.
Of He and She doubts fall on me and thee.
How if the old tale with the new agree?
How if 'twas She that slumbered, and that He
Was from the first a parody of She?

DE ILLO ATQUE ILLA.

SOLUS dum requiescit Ille primus,
E costa minor exit Illa proles.
Nunc contraria miraque intuemur:
Ignara est minor Ille cretus Illa.
At sic Ille mihi tibique, et Illa,
Fiunt in dubio: sed huic recenti
Quid si fabula convenit vetusta ?
Quid si dormiit Illa tunc in horto?
Illiusque imitatio faceta

Est a principio creatus Ille?

W. B.

S. L

A RUINED LIBRARY.

IMPERIOUS Cæsar, dead and turned to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away;
Here the live thought of buried Cæsar's brain
Has served a lazy slut to lay the train
That lights a dunce's fire. Here Homer's seen
All torn or crumpled in the pettish spleen
Of a spoilt urchin. Here a leaf from Glanvil

Is reft to mark a place in On the Anvil :
And here a heavy blotted Shakespeare's page
Holds up an inky mirror to the age.

Here, looking round, you're but too sure to see a
Heart-breaking wreck from the Via Jacobæa;
Here some rare pamphlet long a-missing lurks
In an odd volume of Lord Bacon's Works.
Here may you find a Stillingfleet or Blair
Usurp the binding of a lost Voltaire ;

And here a tattered Boyle doth gape ungently

Upon a damp-disfigured Life of Bentley.

Here half a Rabelais jostles for position

The quarter of a Spanish Inquisition.

Here Young's Night Thoughts lie mixed with Swin

burne's Ballads

'Mid scraps of works on Poisons and on Salads.