winelet Hun!"

"He is not, Harburn; I assure you."

Harburn got up. "He _is_; I tell you he _is_. Ah! Those brutes! Well! I
haven't done with them yet."

And I heard the snap of his jaw, and saw his eyes fixed fiercely on some
imaginary object. I changed the subject hurriedly, and soon took my
departure. But going down the steps, an old jingle came into my head,
and has hardly left it since:

"The man recovered from the bite,
The dog it was that died."

1919.

X

IN HEAVEN AND EARTH

We were yarning after dinner, and, whether because three of us were
fishermen, or simply that we were all English, our yarns were taking a
competitive turn. The queerest thing seen during the War was the subject
of our tongues, and it was not till after several tit-bits had been
digested that Mallinson, the painter, ill and ironical, blue-eyed, and
with a fair pointed beard, took his pipe out of his mouth, and said:

"Well, you chaps, what I saw last week down in Kent takes some beating.
I'd been sketching in a hay-field, and was just making back along the
top hedge to the lane when I heard a sound from the other side like a
man's crying. I put my eye to a gap, and there, about three yards in,
was a grey-haired bloke in a Norfolk jacket and flannel trousers,
digging like a fiend, and crying like a baby--blowing, and gasping and
sobbing, tears and sweat rolling down into his beard like rivers. He'd
plunge his pick in, scratch, and shovel, and hack at the roots as if for
dear life--he was making the hole too close to the hedge, of
course--and all the time carrying on like that. I thought he must be
digging his own grave at least. Suddenly he put his pick down, and there
just under the hedge I saw a dead brown dog, lying on its side, all
limp. I never see a dead animal myself, you know, without a bit of a
choke; they're so soft, and lissom; the peace, and the pity--a sort of
look of: "Why--why--when I was so alive?" Well, this elderly Johnny took
a good squint at it, to see if the hole was big enough, then off he went
again, sobbing and digging like a fiend. It was really a bit too weird,
and I mouched off. But when I'd gone about half a mile, I got an attack
of the want-to-knows, came back, and sneaked along the hedge. There he
was still, but he had finished, and was having a mop round, and putting
the last touches to a heap of stones. I strolled up, and said:

'Hot work, Sir, digging, this weather!'

He was a good-lo