ly in her furs, and the
carriage rolled away in the darkness, he spoke to her, somewhat puzzled:

"I should be sorry to think the American Ambassador has been taking too
much wine--as you well know, my knowledge of the barbarous English
tongue is but limited, and yet--I thought, as I joined you, he was
talking some farrago of nonsense about a _Yellow Cat_!"

* * * * *

That year the Yellow Cat came home lean and gaunt, a chastened, humble
creature, as one who has failed in a long quest, and is glad to stretch
his weary length before the hearth and reap the neglected benefits of
the domestic life.

"It is really very odd" said the minister, quite as if he were saying
something he had never thought of saying before, "where that cat goes in
the summer!"

"Isn't it?" responded the minister's wife--just as she always did. "It
fires the imagination! He walks off some fine morning and completely
shuts the door on our life here--as if he gave us notice not to pry into
his movements. But this time"--she was leaning to stroke the tawny sides
with a pitying touch--"this time you may be sure something very sad and
disappointing happened to him--something in that other life went quite
wrong! How I wish we could understand what it was!"

V

A COCK AND POLICEMAN

A Tale of Rural England

By RALPH KAYE ASSHETON

IT HAPPENED up in Lancashire, and the truth can be vouched for by at
least half a hundred spectators. It fell in this wise: Bob O' Tims owned
a game-cock which was the envy of the whole street for lustre of
coloring and soundness of wind. Its owner was almost unduly proud of his
possession, and would watch it admiringly as it stalked majestically
about among its family of hens.

"There's a cock for you!" he would say, with a little wave of his pipe.
"There's not many cocks like that one. The king himself has got nothing
like it down at Windsor Castle."

Now, Jimmy Taylor had always been a rival of Bob O' Tims's. Jimmy's
grandfather had fought at the Battle of Waterloo. This gave him great
prestige, and it was almost universally believed, in Chellowdene, that
the preeminence of the British Empire was mainly due to the battle-zeal
of Jimmy's ancestry. But whenever Jimmy talked about his grandfather,
Bob skilfully turned the conversation to his game-cock. This made Jimmy
testy, and one day he told Bob, in contemptuous tones, that "he'd be
even wi' him yet, in the matter o' ga