bered the little ball of paper, and began fumbling in the
pockets of his wet coat. He did not remember into which pocket he had
put it, and as he dived now into one, and now into another, he
experienced a strange feeling of apprehension lest it should not be
there at all, though he could not for the life of him have explained
the importance he attached to what was in all probability mere rubbish.
But he sighed with relief when his fingers touched the crumpled surface
in an inside pocket, and he drew it out gently and laid it on the
little desk by his easy chair with as much care as if it had been some
rare jewel. Salisbury sat smoking and staring at his find for a few
minutes, an odd temptation to throw the thing in the fire and have done
with it struggling with as odd a speculation as to its possible
contents and as to the reason why the infuriated woman should have
flung a bit of paper from her with such vehemence. As might be
expected, it was the latter feeling that conquered in the end, and yet
it was with something like repugnance that he at last took the paper
and unrolled it, and laid it out before him. It was a piece of common
dirty paper, to all appearance torn out of a cheap exercise book, and
in the middle were a few lines written in a queer cramped hand.
Salisbury bent his head and stared eagerly at it for a moment, drawing
a long breath, and then fell back in his chair gazing blankly before
him, till at last with a sudden revulsion he burst into a peal of
laughter, so long and loud and uproarious that the landlady's baby in
the floor below awoke from sleep and echoed his mirth with hideous
yells. But he laughed again and again, and took up the paper to read a
second time what seemed such meaningless nonsense.

"Q. has had to go and see his friends in Paris," it began. "Traverse
Handel S. 'Once around the grass, and twice around the lass, and thrice
around the maple tree.'"

Salisbury took up the paper and crumpled it as the angry woman had
done, and aimed it at the fire. He did not throw it there, however, but
tossed it carelessly into the well of the desk, and laughed again. The
sheer folly of the thing offended him, and he was ashamed of his own
eager speculation, as one who pores over the high-sounding
announcements in the agony column of the daily paper, and finds nothing
but advertisement and triviality. He walked to the window, and stared
out at the languid morning life of his quarter; the maids in s