red Mr. Brimberly, glancing hastily about.

"Then while you lay bathed in 'orrible gore, I'm goin' t' twist them
whiskers into a 'angman's knot!"

"This is most distressing!" sighed Mr. Brimberly.

"Then," continued the Old Un, grinding his remaining teeth, "I'm
a-goin' t' tread your face in an' dance on y'r blighted stummick. Arter
that--"

"Oh, dear me!" exclaimed Mr. Brimberly, retreating before the oncoming
peril and mopping perspiring brow. But suddenly his wandering eye was
arrested by velvet and gold braid, and lifting up his voice he called:

"William! James! Come 'ere--and come sharp!"

Two vast and splendid shapes loomed upon the scene, supermen whose
silken calves quivered with unaccustomed haste; at a sign from Mr.
Brimberly they seized upon the Old Un and, despite ghoulish threats,
solemnly bore him off.

Down the broad sweep of drive they went, the Old Un pouring forth fluent
curses with every step, until they came to a powerful automobile from
beneath which a pair of neatly gaitered legs protruded.

"Joe!" cried the Old Un, apostrophising these legs, "Joe, stop bein' a
crawlin' worm--come out an' bash these perishers for me, like a good
lad!" But even while he spoke, the footmen hauled him along, so that
when Joe eventually wriggled from under the car the three were close
against the great gates.

The Old Un was earnestly explaining to his captors exactly what he
thought of them, of their fathers and mothers, their kith and kin, and
the supermen were heeding him not the least, when a thunderbolt seemed
to smite them asunder, and Joe was glancing mild-eyed from one
splendid, supine form to the other.

"Hullo, Old Un!" said he, "what's the matter now, you old book o' bad
language, you?"

But Mr. Brimberly, somewhat shaken with his late interview and feeling
the need of a stimulant, had just refilled the long glass when, hearing
a rustle behind him, he turned and beheld a tall woman, elderly and
angular, especially as to chin and elbows, which last obtruded
themselves quite unpleasantly; at least, as he eyed them there was
manifest disapprobation in every hair of his whiskers.

"Now I wonder," he sighed plaintively, "I wonder what under the blue
expandment of 'oly 'eaven you might be, because if you 'appen to be the
washing--"

"I--am--not!"

"Or the cannybal missions--"

"No--sech--thing!"

"Oh!" said Mr. Brimberly, and his gaze wandered to the elbows. "Why,
then, let me hinform you--"