's
prostrate form."

As he spoke we heard Frau Stern's timid, well-meaning ring, and in a
moment her smile filled the archway.

"We don't need to ask if you have news," cried Mrs. Dennis from afar.

"If I haf news. Guess what it is. It is too lovely. You cannot think?
Well, there will be a baby next autumn, what you call it?" "Michaelmas, I
suppose," grunted Harwood through his pipe-smoke and subsided into
indifference.

"All this is most charming and interesting, Frau Stern," expostulated
Dennis, "but, as our enthusiastic friend Harwood delicately hints,
what we really let you go for was to locate the Missing St. Michael."
"I haf almost forgot that," she apologised as she nibbled her
_brioche_, "Emma was so happy. But for the bothersome St. Michael
there is no change. I saw it in what she calls her new den. She
laughed to me and said, 'I cannot let him have it, you see, you would
all say he married me for it.'"

"Bravo!" shouted Dennis and Harwood in unison, and the Sage added with
unction, "So she has not been able to renounce us utterly."

"It is not now for long," rejoined Frau Stern, "it is only to the time we
haf said." "Michaelmas," repeated Harwood disgustedly.

"Yes, that is it," she pursued tranquilly, "Emma told me in confidence,
'To Crocker I cannot give it because of you all, but to our child I may,
and it shall do with it what it will.' Now do you prevail, Misters Dennis
and Harwood?"

"We are a bit downcast but not discomfited," acknowledged Dennis,
while Harwood remained glumly within his smoke. "Emma has escaped us,
but she still pays us the tribute of a subterfuge. It is enough, we
will forgive her, even if her way lies from us dozers here. For to-day
the same sunshine drenches her and us. It is a bond. Let us enjoy it
while we may."

THE LUSTRED POTS

"Haul away, Sam. This is the real thing" came from the depths of the
well. Sam Cleghorn stumbled in the gloom towards the windlass, avoiding
on the way a rude handpump and two heaps of dirt and broken pottery that
sloped threateningly upon the low curb, where balanced a perforated disc
of marble, the great bottom-stone of the well. All these properties
caught a little light from a beam that came through a slit in the wall,
casting most of its uncertain bloom up into a low groined vault, the
heavy round arches of which were separated from squat piers by clumsy
brackets. Outside at the level of the reticulated stone floor one could
he