cal
horse-dealer of his acquaintance.

"Take the mare back for me to Peak Hall, will you, Jenkins, or send one
of your lads?" he begged. "I want to catch this train."

The man assented with pleasure--it paid to do a kindness for a
Strangewey. John passed through the ticket-office to the platform, where
the train was waiting, threw open the door of a carriage, and flung
himself into a corner seat. The whistle sounded. The adventure of his
life had begun at last.

VII

The great French dramatist, dark, pale-faced, and corpulent, stood upon
the extreme edge of the stage, brandishing his manuscript in his hand.
From close at hand, the stage manager watched him anxiously. For the
third time M. Graillot was within a few inches of the orchestra-well.

"If you would pardon me, M. Graillot," he ventured timidly, "the
footlights are quite unprotected, as you see."

Graillot glanced behind him and promptly abandoned his dangerous
position.

"It is you, ladies and gentlemen," he declared, shaking his manuscript
vigorously at the handful of people upon the stage, "who drive me into
forgetfulness and place me in the danger from which our friend here has
just rescued me. Do I not best know the words and the phrases which will
carry the messages of my play across the footlights? Who is to judge,
ladies and gentlemen--you or I?"

He banged the palm of his left hand with the rolled-up manuscript and
looked at them all furiously. A slight, middle-aged man, clean-shaven,
with a single eyeglass, and features very well known to the theatergoing
world, detached himself a little from the others.

"No one indeed, dear M. Graillot," he admitted, "could possibly know
these things so well as you; but, on the other hand, when you write in
your study at Fontainebleau you write for a quicker-minded public than
ours. The phrase which would find its way at once to the brain of the
French audience needs, shall I say, just a little amplification to carry
equal weight across the footlights of my theater. I will admit that we
are dealing with a translation which is, in its way, not sufficiently
literal, but our friend Shamus here has pointed out to me the
difficulties. The fact is, M. Graillot, that some of the finest phrases
in your work are untranslatable."

"There are times," the dramatist asserted, moistening his lips
vigorously with his tongue, "when I regret that I ever suffered Mr.
Shamus or any