s. What's the price o' beer now?"]

* * * * *

ON THE SPY TRAIL.

Jimmy's bloodhound, Faithful, had his fortune told the other
day--really, I mean; not what the man next door says when Faithful keeps
on singing to his cat at night from the bottom of an apple-tree.

Jimmy says the man next door often has gloomy thoughts as to what will
happen to Faithful, and he gets up from his warm bed to tell them to
him.

Jimmy says Faithful was not expecting to have his fortune told; he was
just sitting quietly on the wall near the road, watching the day go by.

Everything was very nice and quiet and peaceful; there was a cat up each
of three trees close by, and a hen up another, all being comfortable and
quite all right where they were, thank you, because Faithful had
inquired.

The man next door was being busy amongst his flowers; he was replanting
some that had been planted right on the top of a place where Faithful
had laid down some bones to mature.

Things were so quiet that Jimmy was just thinking about taking his
bloodhound on the spy trail, when a woman came along with a little
hand-organ slung round her neck and a cage containing two small green
parrots for telling your fortune.

Bloodhounds are very fond of music, Jimmy says; they sing to it, at
least Faithful does. Jimmy says Faithful lifted up his stomach and threw
back his head; but he found it a little difficult to keep time at first,
because, you see, the notes that were missing in the organ were not the
same ones that were missing in Faithful's voice. Jimmy says it is just
the same when two people singing a duet both have hiccoughs; unless they
hiccough together you always notice something wrong.

The parrots were very clever; they would come out of the cage and perch
on the end of a stick the woman held, and then pick a small blue
envelope out of a box. Jimmy says that he doesn't think the parrots had
ever seen a prize bloodhound like Faithful before, not even in their
native haunts, for when Faithful tried to make a fuss of them and love
them they kept flying about the cage and moulting their feathers at him.

Faithful picked up one of the feathers, and when one of the parrots came
out of the cage to tell fortunes he tried to put the feather back again.
But the parrot avoided him and went away.

Faithful did his best to catch it again; he has a very good nose for
game, Jimmy says, and he soon tracked the parrot to its l