, and I'm not feeling very well!" I was
grateful just then for a reassuring glance of pity and confidence from
Lilian's sweet eyes, which revived my drooping spirits for the moment.

"Yes, we'll go into it to-morrow, Travers," said the colonel; "and
then--hullo, why, there's that confounded Frenchman _again_!"

It was indeed; he came prancing back delicately, with a malicious
enjoyment on his wrinkled face. "Once more I return to apologise," he
said. "My poodle 'as permit 'imself ze grave indiscretion to make a very
big 'ole at ze bottom of ze garden!"

I assured him that it was of no consequence. "Perhaps," he replied,
looking steadily at me through his keen, half-shut eyes, "you vill not
say zat ven you regard ze 'ole. And you others, I spik to you: sometimes
von loses a somzing vich is qvite near all ze time. It is ver' droll,
eh? my vord, ha, ha, ha!" And he ambled off, with an aggressively
fiendish laugh that chilled my blood.

"What the deuce did he mean by that, eh?" said the colonel, blankly.

"Don't know," said Travers; "suppose we go and inspect the hole?"

But before that I had contrived to draw near it myself, in deadly fear
lest the Frenchman's last words had contained some innuendo which I had
not understood.

It was light enough still for me to see something, at the unexpected
horror of which I very nearly fainted.

That thrice accursed poodle which I had been insane enough to attempt to
foist upon the colonel must, it seems, have buried his supper the night
before very near the spot in which I had laid Bingo, and in his attempts
to exhume his bone had brought the remains of my victim to the surface!

There the corpse lay, on the very top of the excavations. Time had not,
of course, improved its appearance, which was ghastly in the extreme,
but still plainly recognisable by the eye of affection.

"It's a very ordinary hole," I gasped, putting myself before it and
trying to turn them back. "Nothing in it--nothing at all!"

"Except one Algernon Weatherhead, Esq., eh?" whispered Travers,
jocosely, in my ear.

"No; but," persisted the colonel, advancing, "look here! Has the dog
damaged any of your shrubs?"

"No, no!" I cried, piteously; "quite the reverse. Let's all go indoors
now; it's getting so cold!"

"See, there _is_ a shrub or something uprooted," said the colonel, still
coming nearer that fatal hole. "Why, hullo, look there! What's that?"

Lilian, who was by his side, gave a slight scr