ages beneath. And others how he had
come in the form of a great bird. Father Jean had heard strange sounds
himself, and certain it was that Suzanne had disappeared.

Father Jean heard another version a few weeks later, told him by an
English officer of Engineers who had ridden from the nearest station on
a bicycle and who arrived hot and ravenously thirsty. And Father Jean,
under promise of seeing Suzanne on the first opportunity, believed it.
But to most of his flock it sounded an impossible rigmarole, told for
the purpose of disguising the truth.

So ends my story--or rather the story I have pieced together from
information of a contradictory nature received. Whatever you make of
it; whether with the Doctor you explain it away; or whether with
Professor Littlecherry, LL.D., F.R.S., you believe the world not
altogether explored and mapped, the fact remains that Malvina of
Brittany has passed away. To the younger Mrs. Raffleton, listening on
the Sussex Downs to dull, distant sounds that make her heart beat, and
very nervous of telegraph boys, has come already some of the
disadvantages attendant on her new rank of womanhood. And yet one
gathers, looking down into those strange deep eyes, that she would not
change anything about her, even if now she could.

THE STREET OF THE BLANK WALL.

I had turned off from the Edgware Road into a street leading west, the
atmosphere of which had appealed to me. It was a place of quiet houses
standing behind little gardens. They had the usual names printed on
the stuccoed gateposts. The fading twilight was just sufficient to
enable one to read them. There was a Laburnum Villa, and The Cedars,
and a Cairngorm, rising to the height of three storeys, with a curious
little turret that branched out at the top, and was crowned with a
conical roof, so that it looked as if wearing a witch's hat.
Especially when two small windows just below the eaves sprang suddenly
into light, and gave one the feeling of a pair of wicked eyes suddenly
flashed upon one.

The street curved to the right, ending in an open space through which
passed a canal beneath a low arched bridge. There were still the same
quiet houses behind their small gardens, and I watched for a while the
lamplighter picking out the shape of the canal, that widened just above
the bridge into a lake with an island in the middle. After that I must
have wandered in a circle, for later on I found myself back in the same