cal instincts and their natural affection simultaneously. The
next moment Excalibur was lurching contentedly down the gravel path with
a presentation shoulder of mutton in his mouth.

Then Joy Day began. Excalibur took his prize into the middle of the
tennis lawn. It was a very large shoulder of mutton, but Excalibur
finished it in ten minutes. After that, distended to his utmost limits,
he went to sleep in the sun, with the bone between his paws.
Occasionally he woke up and, raising his head, stared solemnly into
space, in the attitude of a Trafalgar Square lion.

The bone now lay white and gleaming on the grass beside him. Then he
fell asleep again. About four o'clock he roused himself and began to
look for a suitable place of interment for the bone. By four-thirty the
deed was done and he went to sleep once more. At five he woke up and
pandemonium began. He could not remember where he had buried the bone!

He started systematically with the rose beds, but met with no success.
After that he tried two or three shrubberies without avail, and then
embarked on a frantic but thorough excavation of the tennis lawn. We
were taking tea on the lawn at the time, and our attention was first
drawn to Excalibur's bereavement by a temporary but unshakable
conviction on his part that the bone was buried immediately underneath
the tea table.

As the tennis lawn was fast beginning to resemble a golf course we
locked Excalibur up in the washhouse, where his hyena-like howls rent
the air for the rest of the evening, penetrating even to the
dining-room. This was particularly unfortunate, because we were having a
dinner party in honor of a neighbor who had recently come to the
district, no less a personage, in fact, than the new lord-lieutenant of
the county and his lady. Stella was naturally anxious that there should
be no embarrassments on such an occasion, and it distressed her to think
that these people should imagine that we kept a private torture chamber
on the premises.

However, dinner passed off quite successfully and we adjourned to the
drawing-room. It was a chilly September evening and Lady Wickham was
accommodated with a seat by the fire in a large armchair, with a cushion
at her back. When the gentlemen came in Eileen sang to us. Fortunately
the drawing-room is out of range of the washhouse.

During Eileen's first song I sat by Lady Wickham. Her expression was one
of patrician calm and well-bred repose, but it seemed t