obalt, magenta, and purest apple-green window-glass
on either side of the front door. The whole was fenced from the road by
a low, brick-pillared, flint wall, topped with a cast-iron Gothic rail,
picked out in blue and gold.

Tight beds of geranium, calceolaria, and lobelia speckled the
glass-plat, from whose centre rose one of the finest araucarias (its
other name by the way is "monkey-puzzler"), that it has ever been my
lot to see. It must have been full thirty feet high, and its foliage
exquisitely answered the iron railings. Such bijou ne plus ultras,
replete with all the amenities, do not, as I pointed out to
Penfentenyou, transpire outside of England.

A hedge, swinging sharp right, flanked the garden, and above it on
a slope of daisy-dotted meadows we could see Lord Lundie's tiled and
half-timbered summer farmhouse. Of a sudden we heard voices behind the
tree--the fine full tones of the unembarrassed English, speaking to
their equals--that tore through the hedge like sleet through rafters.

"That it is not called 'monkey-puzzler' for nothing, I willingly
concede"--this was a rich and rolling note--"but on the other hand--"

"I submit, me lud, that the name implies that it might, could, would,
or should be ascended by a monkey, and not that the ascent is a physical
impossibility. I believe one of our South American spider monkeys
wouldn't hesitate... By Jove, it might be worth trying, if--"

This was a crisper voice than the first. A third, higher-pitched, and
full of pleasant affectations, broke in.

"Oh, practical men, there is no ape here. Why do you waste one of God's
own days on unprofitable discussion? Give me a match!"

"I've a good mind to make you demonstrate in your own person. Come on,
Bubbles! We'll make Jimmy climb!"

There was a sound of scuffling, broken by squeaks from Jimmy of the high
voice. I turned back and drew Penfentenyou into the side of the flanking
hedge. I remembered to have read in a society paper that Lord Lundie's
lesser name was "Bubbles."

"What are they doing?" Penfentenyou said sharply. "Drunk?"

"Just playing! Superabundant vitality of the Race, you know. We'll watch
'em," I answered. The noise ceased.

"My deliver," Jimmy gasped. "The ram caught in the thicket, and--I'm the
only one who can talk Neapolitan! Leggo my collar!" He cried aloud in a
foreign tongue, and was answered from the gate.

"It's the Calvinistic organ-grinder," I whispered. I had already found
a