red-hot griddle.

"Te-he!" squeaked Petullo with an irritating falsetto. "You must have
your bit joke, Mr. MacTaggart. Did his Grace--did his Grace--I was
just wondering if his Grace said anything to-day about my unfortunate
accident with the compote yestreen." He looked more cunningly than ever
at the Chamberlain.

"In his Grace's class, Mr. Petullo, and incidentally in my own,
nothing's said of a guest's gawkiness, though you might hardly believe
it for a reason that I never could make plain to you, though I know it
by instinct."

"Oh! as to gawkiness, an accident of the like might happen to any one,"
said Petullo, irritably.

"And that's true," confessed the Chamberlain. "But, tut! tut! Mr.
Petullo, a compote's neither here nor there to the Duke. If you had
spilt two of them it would have made no difference; there was plenty
left. Never mind the dinner, Mr. Petullo, just now, I'm in a haste.
There's a Frenchman--"

"There's a wheen of Frenchmen, seemingly," said the writer, oracularly,
taking to the trimming of his nails with a piece of pumice-stone he kept
for the purpose, and used so constantly that they looked like talons.

"Now, what the devil do you mean?" cried Mac-Taggart.

"Go on, go on with your business," squeaked Petullo, with an eye upon an
inner door that led to his household.

"I have his Grace's instructions to ask you about the advisability
of arresting a stranger, seemingly a Frenchman, who is at this moment
suspiciously prowling about the policies."

"On whatna charge, Mr. MacTaggart, on whatna charge?" asked the writer,
taking a confident, even an insolent, tone, now that he was on his own
familiar ground. "Rape, arson, forgery, robbery, thigging, sorning,
pickery, murder, or high treason?"

"Clap them all together, Mr. Petullo, and just call it local
inconduciveness," cried MacTaggart. "Simply the Duke may not care for
his society. That should be enough for the Fiscal and Long Davie the
dempster, shouldn't it?"

"H'm!" said Petullo. "It's a bit vague, Mr. MacTaggart, and I don't
think it's mentioned in Forbes's 'Institutes.' Fifteen Campbell
assessors and the baron bailie might have sent a man to the Plantations
on that dittay ten years ago, but we live in different times, Mr.
MacTaggart--different times, Mr. MacTaggart," repeated the writer,
tee-heeing till his bent shoulders heaved under his seedy, ink-stained
surtout coat.

"Do we?" cried the Chamberlain, with a laugh. "I'm thi