e no effort to stay me, but I could see that he was bursting to
tell me something. At last, taking a religious paper from his pocket,
and pointing to a column, he blurted out:

"You don't take any interest in the Lord's vineyard, I suppose, sir?"

I glanced at the part of the paper indicated. It announced a new mission
to the Chinese, and heading the subscription list stood the name, "Mr.
John Burridge, one hundred guineas."

"You subscribe largely, Mr. Burridge," I said, handing him back the
paper.

He rubbed his big hands together. "The Lord will repay a hundredfold,"
he answered.

"In which case it's just as well to have a note of the advance down in
black and white, eh?" I added.

His little eyes looked sharply at me; but he made no reply, and, shaking
hands, I left him.

THE HOBBY RIDER

Bump. Bump. Bump-bump. Bump.

I sat up in bed and listened intently. It seemed to me as if someone
with a muffled hammer were trying to knock bricks out of the wall.

"Burglars," I said to myself (one assumes, as a matter of course, that
everything happening in this world after 1 a.m. is due to burglars), and
I reflected what a curiously literal, but at the same time slow and
cumbersome, method of housebreaking they had adopted.

The bumping continued irregularly, yet uninterruptedly.

My bed was by the window. I reached out my hand and drew aside a corner
of the curtain. The sunlight streamed into the room. I looked at my
watch: it was ten minutes past five.

A most unbusinesslike hour for burglars, I thought. Why, it will be
breakfast-time before they get in.

Suddenly there came a crash, and some substance striking against the
blind fell upon the floor. I sprang out of bed and threw open the
window.

A red-haired young gentleman, scantily clad in a sweater and a pair of
flannel trousers, stood on the lawn below me.

"Good morning," he said cheerily. "Do you mind throwing me back my
ball?"

"What ball?" I said.

"My tennis ball," he answered. "It must be somewhere in the room; it
went clean through the window."

I found the ball and threw it back to him.

"What are you doing?" I asked. "Playing tennis?"

"No," he said. "I am just practising against the side of the house. It
improves your game wonderfully."

"It don't improve my night's rest," I answered somewhat surlily I fear.
"I came down here for peace and quiet. Can't you do it in the daytime?"

"Daytime!" he laughed.