any; but I
am prepared to swear that at this moment Aunt Elizabeth raised hers. I
will go further. She sniffed.

"Here you are," said the man. "Though it's hard to say good-bye."

He held out the hen to me, and at this point a hitch occurred. He did
his part, the letting go, all right. It was in my department, the
taking hold, that the thing was bungled. Aunt Elizabeth slipped from my
grasp like an eel, stood for a moment eyeing me satirically with her
head on one side, then fled and entrenched herself in some bushes at
the end of the lawn.

There are times when the most resolute man feels that he can battle no
longer with fate; when everything seems against him and the only course
is a dignified retreat. But there is one thing essential to a dignified
retreat. You must know the way out. It was the lack of that knowledge
that kept me standing there, looking more foolish than anyone has ever
looked since the world began. I could not retire by way of the hedge.
If I could have leaped the hedge with a single debonair bound, that
would have been satisfactory. But the hedge was high, and I did not
feel capable at the moment of achieving a debonair bound over a
footstool.

The man saved the situation. He seemed to possess that magnetic power
over his fellows which marks the born leader. Under his command we
became an organised army. The common object, the pursuit of the elusive
Aunt Elizabeth, made us friends. In the first minute of the proceedings
the Irishman was addressing me as "me dear boy," and the man, who had
introduced himself as Mr. Chase--a lieutenant, I learned later, in His
Majesty's Navy--was shouting directions to me by name. I have never
assisted at any ceremony at which formality was so completely dispensed
with. The ice was not merely broken; it was shivered into a million
fragments.

"Go in and drive her out, Garnet," shouted Mr. Chase. "In my direction
if you can. Look out on the left, Phyllis."

Even in that disturbing moment I could not help noticing his use of the
Christian name. It seemed to me more than sinister. I did not like the
idea of dashing young lieutenants in the senior service calling a girl
Phyllis whose eyes had haunted me since I had first seen them.

Nevertheless, I crawled into the bushes and administered to Aunt
Elizabeth a prod in the lower ribs--if hens have lower ribs. The more I
study hens, the more things they seem able to get along without--which
abruptly disturbed her c