ffered the miserable money to Ralph, who
stuck his hands in his pockets, whereupon Balsamo flung the miserable
money violently on to the floor.

A deplorable scene followed, in which the presence of Balsamo did not
prevent Florence Bostock from conveying clearly to Ralph what she
thought of him. They spoke before Balsamo quite freely, as two people
will discuss maladies before a doctor. Ralph departed first; then
Florence. Then Balsamo gathered up the sovereigns. He had honestly
earned Adam's fiver, and since Ralph had refused the two pounds--"I have
seen their hands," said Balsamo the next day to Adam Tellwright. "All is
clear. In a month you will be engaged to her."

"A month?"

"A month. I regret that I had a painful scene with your rival. But of
course professional etiquette prevents me from speaking of that. Let me
repeat, in a month you will be engaged to her."

This prophecy came true. Adam Tellwright, however, did not marry
Florence Bostock. One evening, in a secluded corner at a dance, Ralph
Martin, without warning, threw his arms angrily, brutally, instinctively
round Florence's neck and kissed her. It was wrong of him. But he
conquered her. Love is like that. It hides for years, and then pops out,
and won't be denied. Florence's engagement to Adam was broken. She
married Ralph. She knew she was marrying a strange, dark-minded man of
uncertain temper, but she married him.

As for the unimpeachable Adam, he was left with nothing but the uneasy
fear that he was doomed to die at fifty-two. His wife (for he got one,
and a good one) soon cured him of that.

THE LONG-LOST UNCLE

On a recent visit to the Five Towns I was sitting with my old
schoolmaster, who, by the way, is much younger than I am after all, in
the bow window of a house overlooking that great thoroughfare, Trafalgar
Road, Bursley, when a pretty woman of twenty-eight or so passed down the
street. Now the Five Towns contains more pretty women to the square mile
than any other district in England (and this statement I am prepared to
support by either sword or pistol). But do you suppose that the
frequency of pretty women in Hanbridge, Bursley, Knype, Longshaw and
Turnhill makes them any the less remarked? Not a bit of it. Human nature
is such that even if a man should meet forty pretty women in a walk
along Trafalgar Road from Bursley to Hanbridge, he will remark them all
separately, and feel exactly forty thrills. Consequently my
ever-y