c one. The
good fellow was heart-broken at it, and went out to the Terai tea
planting, where I hear that he is doing well. As to the sailor and
Beddoes, neither of them was ever heard of again after that day on which
the letter of warning was written. They both disappeared utterly and
completely. No complaint had been lodged with the police, so that
Beddoes had mistaken a threat for a deed. Hudson had been seen lurking
about, and it was believed by the police that he had done away with
Beddoes, and had fled. For myself, I believe that the truth was exactly
the opposite. I think that it is most probable that Beddoes, pushed to
desperation, and believing himself to have been already betrayed, had
revenged himself upon Hudson, and had fled from the country with as much
money as he could lay his hands on. Those are the facts of the case,
Doctor, and if they are of any use to your collection, I am sure that
they are very heartily at your service."

[Illustration: ZIG-ZAGS AT THE ZOO

By Arthur Morrison and J. A. Shepherd]

X.--ZIG-ZAG OPHIDIAN.

There is a certain coolness, almost to be called a positive want of
cordiality, between snakes and human beings. More, the snake is never a
social favourite among the animals called lower. Nobody makes an
intimate friend of a snake. Popular natural history books are filled and
running over with anecdotes of varying elegance and mendacity, setting
forth extraordinary cases of affection and co-operation between a cat
and a mouse, a horse and a hen, a pig and a cockroach, a camel and a
lobster, a cow and a wheelbarrow, and so on; but there is never a snake
in one of these quaint alliances. Snakes do not do that sort of thing,
and the anecdote-designer's imagination has not yet risen to the feat of
compelling them, although the stimulus of competition may soon cause
it. The case most nearly approaching one of friendship between man and
snake known to me is the case of Tyrrell, the Zoo snake keeper, and his
"laidly worms." But, then, the friendship is mostly on Tyrrell's side,
and, moreover, Tyrrell is rather more than human, as anyone will admit
who sees him hang boa constrictors round his neck. Of course one often
hears of boys making pets of common English snakes, but a boy is not a
human creature at all; he is a kind of harpy.

[Illustration: LANDLORD.]

[Illustration: LODGER.]

The prairie marmot and the burrowing owl come into neighbourly contact
with the rattlesnak