when he opens the Bible to read the lessons, blessed if there wasn't a
coffin-plate, worn as thin as a sheet of paper, marking the place, Then
he goes into the pulpit, and the first thing he sees was a jawbone full
of teeth lyin' on the cushion; there was ribs in the book-rack; there
was a tooth in his glass of water; there was bones everywhere--you never
see such a sight in all yer life! The young man must ha' taken a
basketful into the church. Some he put into the pews, some into the
collectin' boxes, some under the cushions--you never knew where you were
going to find 'em next!"

"That was a blackguardly thing to do," I said. "The man who did it
deserves the cat."

"So he does," said Johnny. "But I can tell yer, it's made us more
partikler ever since. Everything behind them laurel bushes was cleared
out and buried next day, and, my eye, you wouldn't believe what a lot
there was! Barrer-loads!

"I'm told that when Lord ----, up at the Hall, heard on it, he nearly
killed hisself wi' laughin'. There's some folks"--here Johnny lowered
his voice--"there's some folks _as thinks that his lordship 'ad a 'and
in it hisself_. Some says it was one of them wild chaps as 'e's allus
got staying with him. That's more likely, in my opinion. But it wouldn't
surprise me, just between you and me, to hear some day that his lordship
was going to give us a bit o' new ground."

HOW I TRIED TO ACT THE GOOD SAMARITAN

One of the chief actors in the incident about to be related was a
machine, and it is important that the reader should have this machine in
his mind's eye. It was a motor-bicycle, furnished in the midst with a
sputtering little engine, said to contain in its entrails the power of
three horses and a half. To the side thereof was attached a small
vehicle like a bath-chair, in which favoured friends of the writer are
from time to time either permitted or invited to ride.

On this occasion the bath-chair was empty, and a long journey was
drawing to a close. It is true that at various periods of the day I had
enjoyed the company of a passenger in this humble but lively little
carriage. The first had been a clergyman, who, I believe, had invented a
distant engagement for the sole purpose of inducing me to give him a
ride in my car. To him there had succeeded a series of small boys,
picked up in various villages, each of whom, at the conclusion of a
brief but mad career through space, was duly dismissed with a penny and