ertain
periodicals. The prosecution had made a careful note of the circumstance
that the man whom I claimed to be--and actually was--had posed locally as
some sort of second-hand authority on Balkan affairs, and, in the midst
of a string of questions on indifferent topics, the examining counsel
asked me with a diabolical suddenness if I could tell the Court the
whereabouts of Novibazar. I felt the question to be a crucial one;
something told me that the answer was St. Petersburg or Baker Street. I
hesitated, looked helplessly round at the sea of tensely expectant faces,
pulled myself together, and chose Baker Street. And then I knew that
everything was lost. The prosecution had no difficulty in demonstrating
that an individual, even moderately versed in the affairs of the Near
East, could never have so unceremoniously dislocated Novibazar from its
accustomed corner of the map. It was an answer which the Salvation Army
captain might conceivably have made--and I made it. The circumstantial
evidence connecting the Salvationist with the crime was overwhelmingly
convincing, and I had inextricably identified myself with the
Salvationist. And thus it comes to pass that in ten minutes' time I
shall be hanged by the neck until I am dead in expiation of the murder of
myself, which murder never took place, and of which, in any case, I am
innocent."

* * * * *

When the Chaplain returned to his quarters some fifteen minutes later,
the black flag was floating over the prison tower. Breakfast was waiting
for him in the dining-room, but he first passed into his library, and,
taking up the _Times_ Atlas, consulted a map of the Balkan Peninsula. "A
thing like that," he observed, closing the volume with a snap, "might
happen to any one."

THE SEX THAT DOESN'T SHOP

The opening of a large new centre for West End shopping, particularly
feminine shopping, suggests the reflection, Do women ever really shop?
Of course, it is a well-attested fact that they go forth shopping as
assiduously as a bee goes flower-visiting, but do they shop in the
practical sense of the word? Granted the money, time, and energy, a
resolute course of shopping transactions would naturally result in having
one's ordinary domestic needs unfailingly supplied, whereas it is
notorious that women servants (and housewives of all classes) make it
almost a point of honour not to be supplied with everyday necessities.
"We