is iron hand, that it might have been some doctrinal
pamphleteer who claimed his cool attention.

When he had finished he rose very quietly and put the whole MS. behind
the grate. Then I remembered that Delavoye also was in the room, and I
signalled to him because the Vicar was stooping over the well-laid grate
and striking matches. But Delavoye only shook his head, and sat where he
was when Mr. Brabazon turned and surveyed us both, with the firewood
crackling behind his clerical tails.

"Sorry to disappoint you, Mr. Delavoye," said he; "but I think you will
agree that this is a case for the exercise of my powers in connection
with our little magazine. The stupendous production now perishing in the
flames was of course intended as a practical joke at our expense."

"And I never saw it!" cried Uvo, scrambling to his feet. "Of course, if
you come to think of it, that's the whole and only explanation--isn't
it, Gillon? A little dig at the Delavoyes as well, by the way!"

"Chiefly at us, I imagine," said the Vicar dryly. "I rather suspect that
the very style of writing is an attempt at personal caricature. The
taste is execrable all through. But that is only to be expected of the
anonymous lampooner."

"Was there really no name to it, Mr. Brabazon?"

The question was asked for information, but Uvo's tone was that of
righteous disgust.

"No name at all. And one sheet of type-writing is exactly like another.
My sister had not read it all herself, I gather?"

"Evidently not. And she only read the first half to us."

"Thank goodness for that!" cried the Vicar, off his guard. "The whole
impertinence," he ran on more confidentially, "is so paltry, so vulgar,
so egregiously badly done! It's all beneath contempt, and I shall not
descend to the perpetrator's level by attempting to discover who he is.
Neither shall I permit the matter to be mentioned again in my household.
And as gentlemen I look to you both to resist the ventilation of a most
ungentlemanly hoax."

But the promise that we freely gave did not preclude us from returning
at once to No. 7, and there and then concocting a letter to Miss Julia,
which I slipped into the letter-box of the makeshift vicarage as the
birds were waking in the wood behind Mulcaster Park.

It was simply to say that Uvo was after all afraid that his kith and kin
really might resent the publication of her thrilling but painful tale of
their common ancestor; and therefore he had taken Mis