ectors
and other mad men, that is to say, he carefully and with a sort of
anguish selected the best roots from the less excellent, praised some,
disparaged others, made a subtle scale ranging from a thrilling worth
and rarity to a degraded insignificance, and then bought them all. The
man was just pushing off his barrow when he stopped and came close to
the Major.

"I'll tell you what, sir," he said. "If you're interested in them
things, you just get on to that wall."

"On the wall!" cried the scandalised Major, whose conventional soul
quailed within him at the thought of such fantastic trespass.

"Finest show of yellow pansies in England in that there garden, sir,"
hissed the tempter. "I'll help you up, sir."

How it happened no one will ever know but that positive enthusiasm of
the Major's life triumphed over all its negative traditions, and with
an easy leap and swing that showed that he was in no need of physical
assistance, he stood on the wall at the end of the strange garden. The
second after, the flapping of the frock-coat at his knees made him feel
inexpressibly a fool. But the next instant all such trifling sentiments
were swallowed up by the most appalling shock of surprise the old
soldier had ever felt in all his bold and wandering existence. His eyes
fell upon the garden, and there across a large bed in the centre of the
lawn was a vast pattern of pansies; they were splendid flowers, but for
once it was not their horticultural aspects that Major Brown beheld, for
the pansies were arranged in gigantic capital letters so as to form the
sentence:

DEATH TO MAJOR BROWN

A kindly looking old man, with white whiskers, was watering them. Brown
looked sharply back at the road behind him; the man with the barrow had
suddenly vanished. Then he looked again at the lawn with its incredible
inscription. Another man might have thought he had gone mad, but Brown
did not. When romantic ladies gushed over his V.C. and his military
exploits, he sometimes felt himself to be a painfully prosaic person,
but by the same token he knew he was incurably sane. Another man, again,
might have thought himself a victim of a passing practical joke,
but Brown could not easily believe this. He knew from his own quaint
learning that the garden arrangement was an elaborate and expensive one;
he thought it extravagantly improbable that any one would pour out money
like water for a joke against him. Having no explanation whatever to
of