sians."

"Is there any asparagus in the garden?" asked Beryl; "because I've told
cook--"

"Not anywhere in the garden," snapped the Rector, "but there's no doubt
plenty in the asparagus-bed, which is the usual place for it."

And he walked away into the region of fruit trees and vegetable beds to
exchange irritation for boredom. It was there, among the gooseberry
bushes and beneath the medlar trees, that the temptation to the
perpetration of a great literary fraud came to him.

Some weeks later the _Bi-Monthly Review_ gave to the world, under the
guarantee of the Rev. Wilfrid Gaspilton, some fragments of Persian verse,
alleged to have been unearthed and translated by a nephew who was at
present campaigning somewhere in the Tigris valley. The Rev. Wilfrid
possessed a host of nephews, and it was of course, quite possible that
one or more of them might be in military employ in Mesopotamia, though no
one could call to mind any particular nephew who could have been
suspected of being a Persian scholar.

The verses were attributed to one Ghurab, a hunter, or, according to
other accounts, warden of the royal fishponds, who lived, in some
unspecified century, in the neighbourhood of Karmanshah. They breathed a
spirit of comfortable, even-tempered satire and philosophy, disclosing a
mockery that did not trouble to be bitter, a joy in life that was not
passionate to the verge of being troublesome.

"A Mouse that prayed for Allah's aid
Blasphemed when no such aid befell:
A Cat, who feasted on that mouse,
Thought Allah managed vastly well.

Pray not for aid to One who made
A set of never-changing Laws,
But in your need remember well
He gave you speed, or guile--or claws.

Some laud a life of mild content:
Content may fall, as well as Pride.
The Frog who hugged his lowly Ditch
Was much disgruntled when it dried.

'You are not on the Road to Hell,'
You tell me with fanatic glee:
Vain boaster, what shall that avail
If Hell is on the road to thee?

A Poet praised the Evening Star,
Another praised the Parrot's hue:
A Merchant praised his merchandise,
And he, at least, praised what he knew."

It was this verse which gave the critics and commentators some clue as to
the probable date of the composition; the parrot, they reminded the
public, was in high vogue as a type of elegance in the days of Hafiz of
Shiraz; in the quatrains