asonable consideration out of this vast stream of wealth
and industry that we have called into being we intend coming out of court
and staying out. Good afternoon."

The news of this latest strike spread universal dismay. Its
inaccessibility to the ordinary methods of persuasion made it peculiarly
formidable. If the Duke and Duchess persisted in being reconciled the
Government could hardly be called on to interfere. Public opinion in the
shape of social ostracism might be brought to bear on them, but that was
as far as coercive measures could go. There was nothing for it but a
conference, with powers to propose liberal terms. As it was, several of
the foreign witnesses had already departed and others had telegraphed
cancelling their hotel arrangements.

The conference, protracted, uncomfortable, and occasionally acrimonious,
succeeded at last in arranging for a resumption of litigation, but it was
a fruitless victory. The Duke, with a touch of his earlier precocity,
died of premature decay a fortnight before the date fixed for the new
trial.

THE ROMANCERS

It was autumn in London, that blessed season between the harshness of
winter and the insincerities of summer; a trustful season when one buys
bulbs and sees to the registration of one's vote, believing perpetually
in spring and a change of Government.

Morton Crosby sat on a bench in a secluded corner of Hyde Park, lazily
enjoying a cigarette and watching the slow grazing promenade of a pair of
snow-geese, the male looking rather like an albino edition of the russet-
hued female. Out of the corner of his eye Crosby also noted with some
interest the hesitating hoverings of a human figure, which had passed and
repassed his seat two or three times at shortening intervals, like a wary
crow about to alight near some possibly edible morsel. Inevitably the
figure came to an anchorage on the bench, within easy talking distance of
its original occupant. The uncared-for clothes, the aggressive, grizzled
beard, and the furtive, evasive eye of the new-comer bespoke the
professional cadger, the man who would undergo hours of humiliating tale-
spinning and rebuff rather than adventure on half a day's decent work.

For a while the new-comer fixed his eyes straight in front of him in a
strenuous, unseeing gaze; then his voice broke out with the insinuating
inflection of one who has a story to retail well worth any loiterer's
while to listen to.

"It's a str