dise of pigs," he said, "or you'll be turned to a pillar of salt, or possibly of mustard as more appropriate to such meat. They won't run away yet. There are other creatures formed by the Creator for the contemplation of man; there are other things made by man after the pattern of the creatures, from the great White Horses of Wessex to that great white bird on which you yourself flew among the birds. Fine subject for a poem of the first and last things."

"Bird that lays rather dreadful eggs," said Crane. "In the next war——— Why, where the deuce has he gone?"

"Pigs, pigs," said Hood sadly. "The overpowering charm which pigs exercise upon us at a certain time of life; when we hear their trotters in our dreams and their little curly tails twine about us like the tendrils of the vine———"

"Oh, bosh," said the Colonel.

For indeed Mr. Hilary Pierce had vanished in a somewhat startling manner, ducking under the corner of a hedge and darting up a steeper path, over a gate and across the corner of a hayfield, where a final bound through bursting bushes bought him on top of a low wall looking down at the pig-sty and Miss Joan Hardy, who was calmly walking away from it. He sprang down on to the path; the morning sun picked