Under the fallen mess of brick, marble, and wood there are
feeble undulations. A phrase keeps running through his mind--"Expressing
her primitive virility." He tries to think where he has read it, and
what it means, and how it could apply to the present case. The
undulations cease. He decides that the phrase could not apply to it. He
returns to the window-seat. A new horror obsesses him. The moon has
moved round. The chessboard has been blotted out. _In extremis_, _Lord
Gumthorpe_ falls back on his primitive instincts and rings for the
butler. There is an imperceptible pause. _Stud_ glides in and stands in
the middle of the room, tears of reverence and respectability streaming
down his cheeks.

LORD GUMTHORPE. (after an interminable pause). _Your mistress has
dropped her fan into the fireplace!_

[With a little croon of pleasure, Stud falls towards the fireplace.
Suddenly he stops, beholding the-fallen wreckage. For a fraction of a
second the fetters of a generation of servile habits are almost broken.
A fugitive expression of surprise passes over his face. Then,
remembering himself, he stumbles over the _debris_ and, groping among
the cinders, picks up the fan.

STUD (with finesse). _Here is the fan, my Lord. Shall I present it to
her Ladyship?_

LORD GUMTHORPE. (with extraordinary subtlety). _No, you may keep it. Her
Ladyship does not require it._

[_Stud_ goes out with the fan. _Lord Gumthorpe_ stands irresolutely
warming his hands at the fire. _Angela's_ father from Atlantis,
Tennessee, is heard outside in the hall eating cantaloup. The pips
rattle against the door. Unable to withstand this further symbol of
inevitable doom, _Lord Gumthorpe_ throws himself on to the fire. He is
burnt up. The fire is blotted out. Everything is blotted out.

CURTAIN.

* * * * *

[Illustration: _Irritable Plus 4 (whose opponent is standing too close
behind him)._ "NOW THEN, SIR, WHAT ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO BE DOING THERE?"

_Mild 18._ "ONLY GETTING READY TO CLAP."]

* * * * *

From an account of a football match by "Brigadier" in _The Daily
Record_:--

"Cresswell sustained an injury, and took no risks, but R. M. Morton
would have risked going at a battalion of dragoons with bayonets
drawn."

There must be moments in these peaceful journalistic days of his
retirement when that grand old soldier, "Brigadier," wishes he were once
more charging at t