the others to leave, I soon found myself alone.

"Now!" said Leeson with a triumphant expression. "Thank goodness they're
out of the way and we're quiet and snug. Now you shall hear my poet." He
felt for the book. "I tell you----" He stopped in dismay.

"I could have sworn it was in my pocket," he said, and began to hunt about
the room.

"Where on earth can it be?" he said.

I helped him to look for it, but in vain.

"Perhaps Mrs. Bunton took it?" I suggested.

"I'm sure she didn't," he replied.

"Perhaps Mrs. Leeson has it?" I said.

But she had not. The last time she had seen it it was on the table after
Mrs. Bunton copied the title.

Leeson was so utterly dejected that I felt almost sorry for him.

"Well," he said at last, "that's the strangest thing I ever heard of. What
a disappointment! I did want you to hear it."

But it was precisely because I didn't that in my own pocket was the
volume's present hiding-place. When the front door had closed behind me
half-an-hour later, I slipped it into the letter-box.

* * * * *

THE FOX.

The birds see him first, jay and blackbird and thrush;
They shriek at his coming and curse him, each one;
With the clay of the vale on his pads and his brush,
It's the Fallowfield fox and he's pretty near done;
It's a couple of hours since a whip tally-ho'd him;
Now the rookery's stooping to mob and to goad him;
There's an earth on the hill, but he's cooked past believing,
And his tongue's hanging out and his wet ribs are heaving.
Here he comes up the field at a woebegone trot;
He's stiff as a poker, he's done all he knows;
Now the ploughmen'll view him as likely as not;
There--they run to the paling and yell as he goes:
Here's an end, if we live to be two minutes older;
See, he turns a glazed eye o'er a mud-spattered shoulder;
There's a hound through the hedgerow....
Game's up, and he's beaten,
And he faces about with a snarl to be eaten.

* * * * *

[Illustration: MR. PUNCH'S GALLERY OF BRAVE DEEDS. No. 1.

THE HERO WHO TOOK OUT A PARTY OF LADIES FERRETING.]

* * * * *

THE RING.

KEEKS _v._ COCKLES.

I.--OLD STYLE.

_By Tony Shovell._

The much-boomed fight between Nobby Keeks and Bill Cockles ended in
something of a _fiasco_, the last named being knocked out with a terrific
uppercut in the first round.

The men strippe