"What about your pension?"

"Pension, did you say? Well, you see, sir, I've been in a bit o' trouble
since I come home. There was a kind old gent as give me three months in
the choke-hole for not behavin' quite as handsome as I ought to. 'It'll
spile all my good looks, your Worship,' I says when he sentenced me.
'Remove the prisoner, officer!' he says; and I thinks to myself, 'I'd
like to remove _you_, old gentleman, and see what you'd look like on a
hammynition waggon, wi' two dead pals under your nose, and a pom-pom
shell a-burstin' in your ear-'ole.' But I've had one good friend,
anyhow; and I don't want a better--and that's him there" (indicating
Macbeth). "He's a _man_, he is! I can tell you one thing!--if it hadn't
been for him there, I'd ha' sent the other half o' my head to look for
the first long ago--and that's the truth!"

While this conversation was proceeding Macbeth, _more suo_, continued to
mutter like a man in a troubled dream, now humming a bar of the tune,
now drawling out a phrase from the words, "O'er moor and fen, o'er crag
and torrent, till the night is gone"--this, I believe, he repeated
several times, lighting his pipe in the intervals and spitting out of
the door. Then he went on more articulately: "Rum go, ain't it--me
singing that hymn in a place like this? Sung it in church 'undreds o'
times. We give it sometimes in the streets. It's part of our
_repertoire_" (he pronounced this word quite correctly). "But I can't
help makin' a babby o' mysen whenever I think o' what it means. I don't
think of it, as a rewle. I should break down if I did; like as I nearly
did just naow. Oh Lor'! I can get on all right till I comes to th' end.
It's them 'angel faces' wot knocks the stuffing out o' _me_!"

"Same 'ere," I replied; and I put my head out of the aperture for a
breath of fresh air.

* * * * *

"When shall we three meet again
In thunder, lightning, or in rain?"

END

* * * * *

VIOLA BURHANS'S THE CAVE-WOMAN

A novel of to-day that commences in a cave so dark that the hero can see
nothing of the woman he meets there. It ends in the same cave, and much
of the action occurs in and near a neighboring summer hotel. Robbery and
mystery, as well as love, figure in the plot.

"An excellent detective.... The action moves quickly.... Many
sidelights fall upon newspaperdom, and the author tells her story
cl