proudly wear medals of their own winning, even if they do so side by side with those gained by their forefathers. Yes, those thousand picked men of that fine Imperial Contingent will have been so many Peace missionaries bringing back news of the loyalty as well as of the wealth and beauty of that fair England beyond the sea.

Not less emphatically will these tidings be endorsed by the welcome extended to their King's son and his gracious young wife when they too landed on those smiling shores a few months later. The message their Royal Highnesses brought was to the same effect, and received in the same spirit of love and gratitude. At all events it will not be our fault if our kinsmen beyond the sea, especially in the Islands of New Zealand, do not understand how we valued the splendid help they gave the Empire in its hour of need, and how grateful we are for it. I was reading a little while ago some of the evidence taken before the War Commission last year, and saw that one of the Generals was asked if he had, at any time, any of the many New Zealand Contingents under his command. 'I am sorry to say I had not,' was the reply, and I felt just as personally proud of the answer as though I were a New Zealander myself, and all for the sake of those dear distant days and the good friends who helped to make them so happy.

DEBITA FLACCO.

Ibam forte via sacrâ sicut meus est mos.-HOR. Sat. i. 9.

AT 5.10 on the 23rd of June,

Following my custom of an afternoon,
A little weary, meditative, slow,

I strolled up Piccadilly towards the Row.
When suddenly, ere I had time to see
If Hell or any Club were near to me,

I found my arm 'pumphandled' up and down

By one I think the greatest Bore in town.

'My dear old chap,' the coarse-tongued idiot cried

I gulped this down, Heaven knows what I replied-
'How are you? Worked to death? We all are! Ay?
I never get a moment in the day!

I seldom meet you now; like me, no doubt,
You've been obliged to give up dining out?'
Here felt I most outrageously inclined,
As vulgar people do, to speak my mind;
And say, 'What, O immeasurable bore,
Think you God gave me my digestion for ?
And shall I not employ the precious boon
According to the Donor's wishes, loon?
For you, if ever, like the rift in lute,

Or little pitted speck in garnered fruit,

As sings our Tennyson, you have marred good fare,
Or vexed good company by being there,

'Twas ill, but it is over; fare you well;

But quit the town from Hyde Park to Pall Mall;
At one place only you're no longer able

To stir mild bloods, and that's the Dinner Table.'
But tyrant manners kept me meek and mute,
While he ran on, the little galling brute!

'Do you write now? You know I always thought,

In spite of all the critics, you had caught
A coal from off the altar, on the whole,
It might be small perhaps, but still a coal.

The day may come when some one I could name
May call attention-' Here I felt on flame,
And should have blazed, but fire will drive out fire,'
As fools say Bacon sang to Shakespeare's lyre;
He linked his arm in mine! The action quenched
My rage at once; I own I fairly blenched
Before the thought that he would proudly show
Me as his captive to the gasping Row.

'Where were you going when we met?' said he;
'Let's to the Gardens for a cup of tea.'
At this I swore a silent oath or two,
For that was just what I was going to do;
And above all things wanted to be free
To join a table which Augusta V.—
As I had every reason to feel sure-
Had sent her servant forward to secure.
So I: 'I fear I can't; I've sworn to go
And sit with poor old Blank an hour or so :
He broke his leg, you know, the other day.'

'Of course he did! Well, Pont Street's in my way;
I'll go and see him, too; poor, dear old man,
He's Chairman of the "Phil-Athenian,"

And more than once has asked me to belong.
You're not a Member? Oh! Then I was wrong
To mention this; don't peach on me, I pray.'
The small, insufferable popinjay!

He funks, thought I, because he saw me grin;
The idea that Blank should want to bring him in!
We've heard that once the Roman Senate sat
Unmoved to see a Horse Chief Magistrate;
But though they brooked to hear their Consul neigh,
We well might shudder at this Donkey's bray;
And, after all, it may be safely said
Caligula's best palfrey was well bred;

Besides, those Romans were a feeble lot;

Their Emperor, too, was mad, which Blank is not.

So mused I; he went lying on alone

About great people he could scarce have known ;
And who were proud to scribble, so he said,
For some damned magazine he edited ;

VOL. XVI.-NO. 93, N.S.

21

Until-I very much at odds with fate-
We got into the crowd at Apsley Gate.
There, all as sudden as had been my doom,
Salvation, like a sunbeam, pierced my gloom.
A lady, no less powerful for good

Than she who sent the Mantuan to that wood
Where Dante wandered hopelessly astray,
Stept calm and resolute athwart our way.
Not over young was she, nor over slim,
But straight, clear-eyed, respectable, and trim,
And at the worst quite good enough for him :
Spite of red cheeks, and fringe, with hat atop
That spread its glories like a florist's shop.
Her Hullo, Charley!' set his face aflame-

I blest my stars that Charles was not my name-
I didn't stay to think who she might be,
Sister or wife, 'twas all the same to me;
If wife, I hadn't got to bear the yoke;
And Bores, I take it, wive like better folk;
Or were she e'en what politicians know
As minister without portfolio,

She was my Guardian Angel: quick as thought
I seized upon my proffered freedom; caught
An honest hansom cabman's answering eye;
And drove off in a sort of ecstasy,
To hear my little torment vainly holloa,
'Hi! Stop!' Sic me servaverat Apollo.

E. H. PEMBER.

HISTORICAL MYSTERIES.1

BY ANDREW LANG.

III. THE CASE OF ALLAN BRECK.

WHо killed the Red Fox? What was the secret that the Celts would not communicate to Mr. R. L. Stevenson, when he was writing 'Kidnapped'? Like William of Deloraine, I know but may not tell'; at least, I know all that the Celt knows. The great-grandfather and grandfather of a friend of mine were with James Stewart of the Glens, the victim of Hanoverian injustice, in a potato field, near the road from Ballachulish Ferry to Appin, when they heard a horse galloping at a break-neck pace. 'Whoever the rider is,' said poor James, 'he is not riding his own horse.' The galloper shouted, Glenure has been shot!'

'Well,' said James to his companion, 'whoever did it, I am the man that will hang for it.'

Hanged he was. The pit in which his gibbet stood is on the crest of a circular 'knowe,' or hummock, on the east side of the Ballachulish Hotel, overlooking the ferry across the narrows, where the tide runs like a great swift river.

I have had the secret from two sources; the secret which I may not tell. One informant received it from his brother, who, when he came to man's estate, was taken apart by his uncle. You are old enough to know now,' said that kinsman, and I tell you that it may not be forgotten.' The gist of the secret is merely what one might gather from the report of the trial, that though Allan Breck was concerned in the murder of Campbell of Glenure, he was not alone in it.

The truth is, according to tradition, that as Glenure rode on the fatal day from Fort William to his home in Appin, the way was lined with marksmen of the Camerons of Lochaber, lurking with their guns among the brushwood and behind the rocks. But their hearts failed them, no trigger was drawn, and when Glenure landed on the Appin side of the Ballachulish Ferry, he said, 'I am safe now that I am out of my mother's country,' his mother having been of clan Cameron. But he had to reckon with the man with the gun, who was lurking in the wood of Letter More ('the great Copyright, 1904, by Andrew Lang, in the United States of America.