ith a duchess for president. And he even left five
shillings to pay for the cab of anybody as might call for the cat. There
is your money.'

Miss Blowser threw the silver away.

'Take your old cat in the bag,' said the matron, slamming the door in the
face of Miss Blowser.

* * * * *

After the trial for breach of promise of marriage, and after paying the
very considerable damages which Miss Blowser demanded and received, old
Mr. Fulton hardened his heart, and engaged a male _chef_.

The gratitude of Mrs. Gisborne, now free from all anxiety, was touching.
But Merton assured her that he knew nothing whatever of the stratagem,
scarcely a worthy one, he thought, as she reported it, by which her uncle
was disentangled.

It was Logan's opinion, and it is mine, that he had not been guilty of
theft, but perhaps of the wrongous detention or imprisonment of Rangoon.
'But,' he said, 'the Habeas Corpus Act has no clause about cats, and in
Scottish law, which is good enough for _me_, there is no property in
cats. You can't, legally, _steal_ them.'

'How do you know?' asked Merton.

'I took the opinion of an eminent sheriff substitute.'

'What is that?'

'Oh, a fearfully swagger legal official: _you_ have nothing like it.'

'Rum country, Scotland,' said Merton.

'Rum country, England,' said Logan, indignantly. '_You_ have no property
in corpses.'

Merton was silenced.

Neither could foresee how momentous, to each of them, the question of
property in corpses was to prove. _O pectora caeca_!

* * * * *

Miss Blowser is now Mrs. Potter. She married her aged wooer, and Rangoon
still wins prizes at the Crystal Palace.

V. THE ADVENTURE OF THE OFFICE SCREEN

It is not to be supposed that all the enterprises of the Company of
Disentanglers were fortunate. Nobody can command success, though, on the
other hand, a number of persons, civil and military, are able to keep her
at a distance with surprising uniformity. There was one class of
business which Merton soon learned to renounce in despair, just as some
sorts of maladies defy our medical science.

'It is curious, and not very creditable to our chemists,' Merton said,
'that love philtres were once as common as seidlitz powders, while now we
have lost that secret. The wrong persons might drink love philtres, as
in the case of Tristram and Iseult. Or an unskilled rural practitioner
might send out the wrong drug, as in the instance of Lucretius, who