s empty. Your double had got out upon the
road."

The duchess uttered a sound which was half gasp, half sigh.

"Hereward!"

"Barnes and Moysey, with beautiful and childlike innocence, when they
found that they had brought the thing home empty, came straightway and
told me that you had jumped out of the brougham while it had been driving
full pelt through the streets. While I was digesting that piece of
information there came the first epistle, with the lock of your hair.
Before I had time to digest that there came the second epistle, with yours
inside."

"It seems incredible!"

"It sounds incredible; but unfathomable is the folly of man, especially of
a man who loves his wife." The duke crossed to Mr. Dacre. "I don't want,
Ivor, to suggest anything in the way of bribery and corruption, but if you
could keep this matter to yourself, and not mention it to your friends,
our white-hatted and gardenia-buttonholed acquaintance is welcome to his
five hundred pounds, and--Mabel, what on earth are you laughing at?"

The duchess appeared, all at once, to be seized with inextinguishable
laughter.

"Hereward," she cried, "just think how that man must be laughing at you!"

And the Duke of Datchet thought of it.

_The Minor Canon_

It was Monday, and in the afternoon, as I was walking along the High
Street of Marchbury, I was met by a distinguished-looking person whom I
had observed at the services in the cathedral on the previous day. Now it
chanced on that Sunday that I was singing the service. Properly speaking,
it was not my turn; but, as my brother minor canons were either away from
Marchbury or ill in bed, I was the only one left to perform the necessary
duty. The distinguished-looking person was a tall, big man with a round
fat face and small features. His eyes, his hair and mustache (his face was
bare but for a small mustache) were quite black, and he had a very
pleasant and genial expression. He wore a tall hat, set rather jauntily on
his head, and he was dressed in black with a long frock coat buttoned
across the chest and fitting him close to the body. As he came, with a
half saunter, half swagger, along the street, I knew him again at once by
his appearance; and, as he came nearer, I saw from his manner that he was
intending to stop and speak to me, for he slightly raised his hat and in
a soft, melodious voice with a colonial "twang" which was far from being
disagreeable, and which, indeed, to my ear g