hey Park, our lights
turned up, the broken torch put out and away. The big gates had long
been shut, but you can manoeuvre a bicycle through the others. We had
no further adventures on the way home, and our coffee was still warm
upon the hob.

"But I think it's an occasion for Sullivans," said Raffles, who now
kept them for such. "By all my gods, Bunny, it's been the most
sporting night we ever had in our lives! And do you know which was the
most sporting part of it?"

"That up-hill ride?"

"I wasn't thinking of it."

"Turning your torch into a truncheon?"

"My dear Bunny! A gallant lad--I hated hitting him."

"I know," I said. "The way you got us out of the house!"

"No, Bunny," said Raffles, blowing rings. "It came before that, you
sinner, and you know it!"

"You don't mean anything I did?" said I, self-consciously, for I began
to see that this was what he did mean. And now at latest it will also
be seen why this story has been told with undue and inexcusable gusto;
there is none other like it for me to tell; it is my one ewe-lamb in
all these annals. But Raffles had a ruder name for it.

"It was the Apotheosis of the Bunny," said he, but in a tone I never
shall forget.

"I hardly knew what I was doing or saying," I said. "The whole thing
was a fluke."

"Then," said Raffles, "it was the kind of fluke I always trusted you to
make when runs were wanted."

And he held out his dear old hand.

THE KNEES OF THE GODS

I

"The worst of this war," said Raffles, "is the way it puts a fellow off
his work."

It was, of course, the winter before last, and we had done nothing
dreadful since the early autumn. Undoubtedly the war was the cause.
Not that we were among the earlier victims of the fever. I took
disgracefully little interest in the Negotiations, while the Ultimatum
appealed to Raffles as a sporting flutter. Then we gave the whole
thing till Christmas. We still missed the cricket in the papers. But
one russet afternoon we were in Richmond, and a terrible type was
shouting himself hoarse with "'Eavy British lorsses--orful slorter o'
the Bo-wers! Orful slorter! Orful slorter! 'Eavy British lorsses!"
I thought the terrible type had invented it, but Raffles gave him more
than he asked, and then I held the bicycle while he tried to pronounce
Eland's Laagte. We were never again without our sheaf of evening
papers, and Raffles ordered three morning ones, and I gave up mine in
spite