e narrator did it--the murder. A stranger is found in a
wood, hung to a tree. Nobody knows who he is. But he and the narrator
had met in Paraguay. He, the murdered man, came home, visited the
narrator, and fell in love with the beautiful being to whom the narrator
was engaged. So the narrator lassoed him in a wood.'

'Why?'

'Oh, the old stock reason. He knew too much.'

'What did he know?'

'Why, that the narrator was living on a treasure originally robbed from a
church in South America.'

'But, if it _was_ a treasure, who would care?'

'The girl was a Catholic. And the murdered man knew more.'

'How much more?'

'This: to find out about the treasure, the narrator had taken priest's
orders, and, of course, could not marry. And the other man, being in
love with the girl, threatened to tell, and so the lasso came in handy.
It is a Protestant story and instructive.'

'Jolly instructive! But, Miss Martin, you are the Guy Boothby of your
sex!'

At this supreme tribute the girl blushed like dawn upon the hills.

'My word, she is pretty!' thought Logan; but what he said was, 'You know
Mr. Tierney, your neighbour? Out of a job as a composition master.
Almost reduced to University Extension Lectures on the didactic Drama.'

Tierney was talking eagerly to his neighbour, a fascinating lady
laundress, _la belle blanchisseuse_, about starch.

Further off a lady instructress in cookery, Miss Frere, was conversing
with a tutor of bridge.

'Tierney,' said Logan, in a pause, 'may I present you to Miss Martin?'
Then he turned to Miss Markham, formerly known at St. Ursula's as Milo.
She had been a teacher of golf, hockey, cricket, fencing, and gymnastics,
at a very large school for girls, in a very small town. Here she became
society to such an alarming extent (no party being complete without her,
while the colonels and majors never left her in peace), that her
connection with education was abruptly terminated. At present raiment
was draped on her magnificent shoulders at Madame Claudine's. Logan, as
he had told Merton, 'occasionally met her,' and Logan had the strongest
reasons for personal conviction that she was absolutely proof against
infection, in the trying circumstances to which a Disentangler is
professionally exposed. Indeed she alone of the women present knew from
Logan the purpose of the gathering.

Cigarettes had replaced the desire of eating and drinking. Merton had
engaged a withdrawing ro