rogressing. I have usually in reply quoted the
remark of one of their number on leaving us for the Front after a
short holiday, that he was now looking forward to a little peace and
rest. I wish here to add a postscript to this concerning a recent
unexpected truce.

Political geography is not written as it should be, so that there may
be people who have not even heard of the Great War between Ballybun
and Kilterash. No one knows for certain when it started, or why. A
local antiquary, after prolonged study of chronicles, memorials, rolls
and records, to say nothing of local churchyards, refers it with some
confidence to the reign of HENRY II. (LOUIS VII. being King of France,
in the pontificate of ADRIAN IV. and so on), and to the forcible
abduction of a pig (called the White Pearl) by the then ruling monarch
of Kilterash. The Editor of _The Kilterash Curfew_, in one of his
recent "Readings for the Day of Rest," remarked that Christian charity
compelled him to hurl this foul aspersion back in the teeth of this
so-called antiquary; the whole world knew that the pig had been born
in the parish of Kilterash, but had "strayed" across the Bun, as
things too often had the habit of straying.

I am the "so-called antiquary." My little pamphlet proves in less
than three hundred pages the truth of my allegation concerning the
abduction of the White Pearl, giving the original texts on which I
rely and the genealogies of all concerned in a sordid story.

Since 1157, as far as history records, we have been afflicted with
only two periods of truce. One was when, on hearing of the foul wrong
done by the German Brute in Belgium, we united in enlisting recruits
for our local regiment. This truce was broken by my worthy friend, the
Editor of _The Curfew_, who pointed out, more in anger than in sorrow,
that Ballybun had sent six men fewer than Kilterash. The second
truce--again broken by the enemy--concerned myself. Wishing to add, if
possible, to the evidence from monuments contained in my pamphlet, I
was copying an inscription I had only just discovered in the disused
churchyard of Killyburnbrae, when one of these light Atlantic showers
sprang up and soaked me to the backbone. The result was influenza and
a high temperature, which rose while I was reading _The Curfew_ upon
my brochure, "_The White Pearl of Ballybun_, an Impartial Examination
with the Original Documents herein set out and now for the first time
deciphered by a Member o