logies for his garb, when a tremendous uproar from the corridor
interrupted him.

Bindle had purposely left the door ajar and through the slit he had, a
moment previously, seen the clergyman disappear precipitately through
one of the bedroom doors. It was from this room that the noise came.

"Mon Dieu!" shrieked a female voice. "Il se battent. A moi! a moi!"
There were hoarse mutterings and the sound of blows.

"'Ere, you look arter each other," Bindle cried, "it's murder this
time." And he sped down the corridor.

He entered No. 21 to find locked together in a deadly embrace the
clergyman and a little bald-headed man in pyjamas. In the bed was a
figure, Bindle mentally commended its daintiness, rising up from a foam
of frillies and shrieking at the top of her voice "silly things wot
wasn't even words," as Bindle afterwards told Mrs. Hearty.

"Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! Il sera tue!"

"Regular fightin' parson," muttered Bindle, as he strove to part the
men. "If 'e don't stop a-bumpin' 'is 'ead on the floor 'e'll break it.
'Ere, stop it, sir. Yer mustn't use 'is 'ead as if it was a cokernut
and yer wanted the milk. Come orf!"

Bindle had seized the clergyman from behind, and was pulling with all
his strength as he might at the collar of a bellicose bull-terrier.

"Come orf, yer mustn't do this sort o' thing in an 'otel. I'm
surprised at you, sir, a clergyman too."

Half choking, the clergyman rose to his feet, and strove to brush the
flood of hair from his eyes. His opponent seized the opportunity and
flew back to bed, where he sat trying to staunch the blood that flowed
from his nose and hurling defiance at his enemy.

"Wot's it all about?" enquired Bindle.

"I--I came back from my bath and found this man in my bed with a--a----"

"Ma femme," shrieked the little Frenchman. "Is it not that we have
slept here every night for----"

"'Ush, sir, 'ush!" rebuked Bindle over his shoulder with a grin. "We
don't talk like that in England."

"Sort of lost yer way, sir, and got in the wrong room," Bindle
suggested to the clergyman.

"He rushed at me and kicked me in the--er--stom--er--well, he kicked
me, and I--I forget, and I--I----"

"Of course yer did, sir; anyone 'ud 'a done the same."

Then to the Frenchman Bindle remarked severely:

"Yer didn't ought to 'ave kicked 'im, 'im a clergyman too. Fancy
kicking a clergyman in the--well, where you kicked 'im. Wot's the
number of yer room, sir?" he enqui