h-map beside him he was dealing strenuously with a pile of
sandwiches in a paper packet, and a tankard of ale from the tavern
opposite, whose shutters had just been taken down. Neither of them
spoke, and there was no sound in the living stillness except the
scratching of Wayne's pencil and the squealing of an aimless-looking
cat. At length Wayne broke the silence by saying--

"Seventeen pounds eight shillings and ninepence."

Turnbull nodded and put his head in the tankard.

"That," said Wayne, "is not counting the five pounds you took
yesterday. What did you do with it?"

"Ah, that is rather interesting!" replied Turnbull, with his mouth
full. "I used that five pounds in a kindly and philanthropic act."

Wayne was gazing with mystification in his queer and innocent eyes.

"I used that five pounds," continued the other, "in giving no less
than forty little London boys rides in hansom cabs."

"Are you insane?" asked the Provost.

"It is only my light touch," returned Turnbull. "These hansom-cab
rides will raise the tone--raise the tone, my dear fellow--of our
London youths, widen their horizon, brace their nervous system, make
them acquainted with the various public monuments of our great city.
Education, Wayne, education. How many excellent thinkers have pointed
out that political reform is useless until we produce a cultured
populace. So that twenty years hence, when these boys are grown up--"

"Mad!" said Wayne, laying down his pencil; "and five pounds gone!"

"You are in error," explained Turnbull. "You grave creatures can never
be brought to understand how much quicker work really goes with the
assistance of nonsense and good meals. Stripped of its decorative
beauties, my statement was strictly accurate. Last night I gave forty
half-crowns to forty little boys, and sent them all over London to
take hansom cabs. I told them in every case to tell the cabman to
bring them to this spot. In half an hour from now the declaration of
war will be posted up. At the same time the cabs will have begun to
come in, you will have ordered out the guard, the little boys will
drive up in state, we shall commandeer the horses for cavalry, use the
cabs for barricade, and give the men the choice between serving in our
ranks and detention in our basements and cellars. The little boys we
can use as scouts. The main thing is that we start the war with an
advantage unknown in all the other armies--horses. And now," he said,
finis