octor.

Miss Marty shook her head. "It's not a plant--it's a kind of bird.
It begins with 'P, h,'--and you think of Dublin."

"Let me see--Phelim? No, I have it! Phoenix."

"That's it--Phoenix. And when it's going to die it lights a fire and
sits down upon it and another springs up from the ashes."

"But I don't see how that applies to the Major."

"No-o?" queried Miss Marty, dubiously. "Well, not in every
particular; but the point is, there's only one at a time."

"The same might be said," urged the Doctor, delicately, "of other
individual members of the Town Council; with qualifications, of
course."

"And somehow I feel--I can't help a foreboding--that if ever we lose
him it will be in some such way."

"Miss Marty!" The Doctor stood up, with horror-stricken face.

"There, now! You may call me fanciful, but I can't help it.
And you've spilled the Fra Angelico! Let me pour you out another
glassful."

"We must all die," answered the Doctor inconsequently, not yet master
of himself.

"Except a few Bible characters," said Miss Marty, filling his glass.
"But what the town would do without _him_ I can't think. In a sense
he _is_ the town."

A moment before the Doctor had all but denied it; but now, overcome
by the thought of a world without the Major, he hid his face. For a
moment, if but in thought, he had been disloyal to his friend, his
hero!

Miss Marty said afterwards that, although not accustomed to prophesy
and humbly aware that it was out of her line, she must have spoken
under inspiration. She was wont also, when she recalled her
forebodings and the events that followed and so signally fulfilled
them, to regret that when the Guernsey merchant took his leave, an
hour later, she omitted to take note of his boots; it being an
article of faith with her that, in his traffic with mortals, the
Prince of Darkness could not help betraying himself by his cloven
hoof.

In the garden meanwhile the Major and his guest were making very good
weather of it, as we say in Troy; the one with his Madeira, the other
with the brown sherry. I leave the reader to discern the gist of
their talk from its technicalities.

"Three gross of ankers, you say?" queried the Major.

"At four gallons the anker, and six francs the gallon."

"It is a large venture."

"And, for that reason, dirt cheap. To my knowledge there is not a
firm in Guernsey at this moment doing trade at less than seven francs
the gallon in