best of two miles
towards Plymouth. In his letter he apologised very prettily to my
grandmother for not saying good-bye. He owed his life to her, he
said; but being taken unawares he had done the best he could in the
circumstances.'

MY CHRISTMAS BURGLARY.

[_From the Memoirs of a Pierrot_.]

I had come with high expectations, for Mr Felix, a bachelor of
sixty-five, was reputed to have made for thirty years this particular
cabinet his idol. Any nabob or millionaire can collect. Mr Felix,
being moderately well to do, had selected. He would have none but
the best; and the best lay stored delicately on cotton-wool, ticketed
with the tiniest handwriting, in a nest of drawers I could have
unlocked with a hairpin.

The topmost drawer contained scarabs (of which I am no connoisseur);
the second some two dozen intaglios, and of these, by the light of my
bull's-eye lantern, I examined five or six before sweeping the lot
into my bag--Europa and the Bull, Ganymede in the eagle's claw, Agave
carrying the head of Pentheus, Icarus with relaxed wing dropping
headlong to a sea represented by one wavy line; each and all
priceless. In the third drawer lay an unset emerald, worth a king's
ransom, a clasp of two amethysts, and a necklace of black pearls
graduated to a hair's-breadth. By this time I could see--I read it
even in the exquisite parsimony of the collection--that I had to deal
with an artist, and sighed that in this world artists should prey
upon one another. The fourth drawer was reserved for miniatures, the
most of them circleted with diamonds: the fifth for snuff-boxes-gold
snuffboxes bearing royal ciphers, snuff-boxes of tortoise-shell and
gold, snuff-boxes of blue enamel set with diamonds. A couple of
these chinked together as they dropped into the bag. The sound
startled me, and I paused for a moment to look over my shoulder.

The window stood open as I had left it. Outside, in the windless
frosty night, the snow on the house-roofs sparkled under a wintering
moon now near the close of her first quarter. But though the night
was windless, a current of air poured into the room, and had set a
little flame dancing in the fireplace where, three minutes ago, the
sea-coals had held but a feeble glow, half-sullen. Downstairs, in
some distant apartment, fiddles were busy with a waltz tune,
and a violoncello kept the beat with a low thudding pizzicato.
For Mr Felix was giving a Christmas party.

I turned