while he is moving it from one spot to another.

As a result of these meditations Charles decided to play a bold game: he would do his best to bring on a crisis in the affairs of his camp and see what came of it; and as he finished off the last few yards of osier-bed he determined on the precise nature of his game. It savored of duplicity perhaps, but after all his friends had not been absolutely straightforward with him, and all is fair in love and war, doubly fair, therefore, when a man is, or hopes to be, engaged in both these pursuits.

Charles therefore approached his friends looking purposefully debonair and well pleased with himself. "Any tea left?" he asked. "I only want one cup; I've had some."

"Had some? Where?" said the Admiral in surprise.

"Oh, I've been paying a call," Charles returned calmly. An expectant silence interrogated him. "Our friends

in the backwater," he explained, airily waving his tea-spoon. "Oh, by the way, they may be coming to tea tomorrow," he continued. "I'm going to run over in the morning and let them know if it's convenient. They're very jolly girls; I shall fetch them round in the dinghy." Charles was rather enjoying himself. It was like a foretaste of revenge when one knows that the real thing is to come after; it was like eating one's cake and having it too.

The faces of his hearers expressed all the emotions he could have wished. William put down his pipe; Majendie adjusted his eyeglasses; the Admiral looked his sternest at the defaulter, while Talbot surveyed Charles in speechless consternation. Had he seen and spoken with Cicely? Had Cicely revealed the fact that she knew another of the party? Had Talbot's brain reeled with the possibilities

that crowded upon it. But he soon noticed that Charles was strictly impersonal in his satisfaction; Cicely had, perhaps, not revealed anything. In any case she could not have had much talk with Charles, for it was not so very long since he had parted with her himself. He began to recover his wits, and then it occurred to him that Charles did not seem to know of the other party's intentions; they had not, then, told him that they were going to move. Evidently Charles had not been a welcome guest, or- Talbot considered Charles's cheerful countenance curiously. There was a mystery of some kind, but after all it was in his own favor. Charles's behavior was just the thing to convince even the sceptical William.

and

After the brief silence which followed Charles's announcement gave Talbot time to think it out so far, the Admiral also recovered himself and spoke in the polite but frigid manner in which he would address an impulsive boy. "I'm afraid your friends will be disappointed. I take it we shall be gone long before tea-time."

"Gone?" said Charles, surprised in his turn; he had not expected such suddenness.

"I have always found in my professional experience," said Majendie, "that change of air and scene are the best treatment for an overworked brain, and so—”

"We decided that you would be all the better for visiting the river rather higher up," put in the Admiral.

"It will be quieter for you in the woods," said William. Even he felt that Charles was now a danger to be reckoned with, and he did not propose to spare him.

"But," Charles began. To act the part properly he must object to this high-handed action.

"This place doesn't suit you, you know it doesn't," continued Majendie;

"it makes you imagine things. You're in my hands, and I've prescribed a change for you."

"Very good of you," assented Charles with well simulated heat; "but how do you know that I'm going to follow your prescription?"

"You'll have to follow the house-boat I suppose," said Talbot in his most brutal manner. "That's going for a rest and change, anyhow."

"Of course you can stay here if you like," said Majendie; "but you'll find the grass rather damp at night, which for a person of hereditary gouty tendency means rheumatism. The tent is going for a change, too, unfortunately; otherwise you might have had that."

"You'll have to come," said William. Charles raised some more objections, which were met by his friends, and after a decent show of resistance he allowed himself to yield to force of numbers, saying that if they had made up their minds he supposed he must give way; but, he stipulated, as he was moving against his will he would take no share either in the packing or the towing of the house-boat. This concession they allowed him, after which he went off to bathe in a condition of praiseworthy resignation.

CHAPTER XI.

Even on the stillest and darkest night the river world is never quite silent. There are numberless tiny sounds which in the daytime would pass unnoticed but which under the stars force themselves on the attention of him who is yet awake. The rushes are in perpetual motion; now their whisper is but the faintest memory of a sound; now it increases to an audible rustle of protest as some nocturnal prowler, probably a rat, passes through them. A moth or bat flutters by causing a slight vibration in the

air, so slight that one hardly knows whether it is felt or heard. A fish splashes, a frog croaks, an owl in the distant woods utters its musical tremulous complaint and under all is the deep voice of the river itself, the murmur of eternal unrest. Nature sleeps with an eye always open and stirs from time to time with the vividness of her dreams.

Within the house-boat, though it was a good half-hour after midnight, there was still one person awake, and listening appreciatively to all this faint music of the summer night. It accorded well with the poetry of his mood, and he knelt on his chair-bed with his head out of the little window above it looking down into the dark stream. Presently with a contented sigh he withdrew his head and began to listen for something else. Through the wooden partition came the sound of regular breathing. His friends were evidently sleeping the sleep of the just, and he nodded in a satisfied manner after he had listened. All was well and he could set about that which had to be done before he too slumbered. Sitting down on his bed he put on his tennis shoes and then crept noiselessly to the door leading to the stern of the house-boat, opened it and passed out.

The house-boat, it should be explained, was divided into three rooms opening one into the other. The first served as a sitting-room, the second was fitted up with four bunks and was the bedroom, while the third, constructed originally as a kitchen, had by means of the chair-bed been turned into a spare bedroom and assigned to Talbot as the acknowledged leader of the expedition. Thus being alone he was able to go in or out without disturbing the others.

He crossed the plank carefully, for it was a dark night and the stars unaided by a moon could do no more than

accentuate the fact.

Once on shore he turned in the direction of the osierbed, crossed the other plank with equal caution and followed the accustomed path. When he had nearly reached the end he turned again and forced his way through the osiers on his right. At this point they grew very thick and tall and even in the daytime it would have been no easy matter to get through them. Talbot however seemed to know where he was going and shielding his face with his arms went straight forward. When he was some ten yards from the path he stopped and felt in his pockets for a box of matches, one of which he struck. The light showed him that he had reached the place he wanted-a small hut with brick walls, a thatched roof and the door off its hinges. Originally perhaps it had been built as a little barn, but in the course of years it had dropped out of use, and the osiers growing up all round it concealed its existence from an incurious world. Even from the river no trace of it could be seen though it stood but a few yards from the bank.

Holding the match in front of him Talbot entered and looked round. There was nothing to be seen except a few bean-poles in one corner, and some odd bricks and rubbish. Along one side of the hut however ran a halfloft towards which he looked. His match flickered out and he struck another and felt in his pocket again, this time producing a short piece of candle which he lighted at the match and stuck on a fallen brick.

This done

with his right hand he felt about iu the darkness until he encountered the object of his search, which was in fact a Gladstone bag. Grasping its handle he lowered it slowly, still supporting himself with his left arm. Having accomplished this athletic feat he let himself drop, after which he put the bag down and rested a little.

He was about to pick up bag and candle and go when a totally new idea struck him. He paused and cast a contemplative eye on the Gladstone bag as it lay portly and inert in the feeble light of the candle. Then with a swift decisive movement he took off his coat and hung it on one of the bean-poles, after which he stooped down and opened the bag. In one side of it lay Charles's blue suit neatly folded. Talbot took out the coat, put it on, and held the candle in the air to observe the effect. It is difficult to judge adequately of one's appearance in such circumstances but he was not altogether dissatisfied. The coat might be a fraction too tight and a fraction too short, for he was a slightly bigger man than Charles, but taking it all in all it was not a bad fit. It might pass, he decided, in the country.

Then he took it off, folded it up and put it back, resumed his own coat, packed up the Gladstone bag and blew out the candle as he left the hut, stumbling a little among the osiers owing to the sudden darkness. However in a short time his eyes became more accustomed to it and he made his way back to the house-boat without misadventure. He put his burden in the coal-bunk where Charles had originally hidden it, and then retired to bed feeling that he had earned his repose.

Being snowed up in a library, well stocked with modern scientific folklore, I began a serious study of the subject. I started with enthusiasm. I saw

myself propounding a new theory for every variant text, and pictured myself triumphantly riding through the Otherworld on the Ossianic cycle. After a few days of it, however, I found that, wonderful as the science was, it was not made for me, I ran into a thick German fog, I got mixed up with sagzug and märchen, I failed to appreciate the true differences between those holy men, Zimmer and Rohde, and I wandered aimlessly among parallels and analogues of varying age and provenance. When I emerged from the German fog I found myself staggering about a bleak Irish moor in company with a fellow named Cormac or was it Finn? We were studying the Dinnshenchas, or playing with an Agallamh or looking for a Leprechaun. It was worse than political economy, or logic, or the lost tribes. The fiscal problem is merriment compared to folk-lore. I finished holiday with Trollope and have put folk-lore on my index expurgatorius.

my

One thing, however, haunts me still. I seem to have escaped from the learned confusions of this dismal science with a belief that the world is certainly not progressing. They took a lot of trouble at school to persuade me that the world kept going round. Since I have dipped into folk-lore I find this to be only part of the truth. fact seems to be that the world does nothing else but go round and round and round, reiterating its old ideas in a very tiresome way indeed. The things we do and gossip and preach about to-day are much the same as the

The

things they worried over in the ages of caves and mammoths and flint implements. I feel sorry that I cannot explore folk-lore further, for there are evidently great possibilities in it. But folk-lore is like collecting stamps, or keeping gold-fish or guinea-pigs. It is a "fancy," and if you don't fancy it you cannot be of the "fancy." The slang of the science is too difficult for most of us, and if you cannot master the technical terms of a game, how can you hope to play it? Even football would be dull if you had no elementary conception of “off-side," and it is easier to get "off-side" at folk-lore than it is at football. Moreover, folk-lore is a science entirely devoid of humor. Euclid has its pictures and occasionally admits that things are absurd; but the smiles of folk-lore are in the Otherworld, and even their ghosts do not appear to the latter-day student.

I should never have troubled further about folk-lore had not I met one of its greatest professors. To him I unburdened myself and told my trouble. "Folk-lore books," he explained, “are not made to read. They are written to amuse the writer. You write about folk-lore then you will begin to enjoy it." I remembered that Lord Foppington held similar views when he said, "To mind the inside of a book is to entertain one's self with the forced product of another man's brain. Now, I think a man of quality and breeding may be much amused with the natural sprouts of his own." An idea held in common by a peer and a professor must be precious indeed.

I modestly murmured that I knew nothing about folk-lore. To which the Professor encouragingly remarked that I should "approach the subject with an