ight be very good at anything;
the sort of man you know for years before you find he's a chess
champion."

He had begun to walk in the direction of the disappearing secretary,
and they soon came within sight of the rest of the house-party
talking and laughing on the lawn. They could see the tall figure and
loose mane of the lion-hunter dominating the little group.

"By the way," observed Fisher, "when we were talking about Burke and
Halkett, I said that a man couldn't very well write with a gun.
Well, I'm not so sure now. Did you ever hear of an artist so clever
that he could draw with a gun? There's a wonderful chap loose about
here."

Sir Howard hailed Fisher and his friend the journalist with almost
boisterous amiability. The latter was presented to Major Burke and
Mr. Halkett and also (by way of a parenthesis) to his host, Mr.
Jenkins, a commonplace little man in loud tweeds, whom everybody
else seemed to treat with a sort of affection, as if he were a baby.

The irrepressible Chancellor of the Exchequer was still talking
about the birds he had brought down, the birds that Burke and
Halkett had brought down, and the birds that Jenkins, their host,
had failed to bring down. It seemed to be a sort of sociable
monomania.

"You and your big game," he ejaculated, aggressively, to Burke.
"Why, anybody could shoot big game. You want to be a shot to shoot
small game."

"Quite so," interposed Horne Fisher. "Now if only a hippopotamus
could fly up in the air out of that bush, or you preserved flying
elephants on the estate, why, then--"

"Why even Jink might hit that sort of bird," cried Sir Howard,
hilariously slapping his host on the back. "Even he might hit a
haystack or a hippopotamus."

"Look here, you fellows," said Fisher. "I want you to come along
with me for a minute and shoot at something else. Not a
hippopotamus. Another kind of queer animal I've found on the estate.
It's an animal with three legs and one eye, and it's all the colors
of the rainbow."

"What the deuce are you talking about?" asked Burke.

"You come along and see," replied Fisher, cheerfully.

Such people seldom reject anything nonsensical, for they are always
seeking for something new. They gravely rearmed themselves from the
gun-room and trooped along at the tail of their guide, Sir Howard
only pausing, in a sort of ecstasy, to point out the celebrated gilt
summerhouse on which the gilt weathercock still stood crooked. It
was dus