t. With a
superhuman effort I raised the fainting fairy form out of the vehicle as
it passed like a whirlwind. The next moment horses and carriage were
being dashed to pieces on the rocks below. Under our united weight the
branch of the tree broke, and we fell unhurt on the moss-covered path.
When the eyes of the fair lady opened to gaze upon her deliverer, I
started as if shot. She sprang to her feet. 'Reginald!' she cried. 'Is
it you?'

"She was my first love. We had not seen each other for years! Thanks.
I'll have some more brandy. Hot this time, with some sugar, please."

The following week _The London Library_ appeared. I bought it, and read
"The Duke's Oak," all about Lord Briarrose and Lady Betty Buttercup and
the runaway horses. The tree with the one branch gave the title to the
story, and the Dashing Duke of Broadacres was the aristocratic
acrobat--my friend the author!

[Illustration: FROM A SKETCH BY HERBERT JOHNSON.]

The Savage Club is a remnant of Bohemian London. It was started at a
period when art, literature, and the drama were at their lowest ebb--in
the "good old days" when artists wore seedy velveteen coats, smoked
clays, and generally had their works of art exhibited in pawnbrokers'
windows; when journalists were paid at the same rate and received the
same treatment as office-boys; and when actors commanded as many
shillings a week as they do pounds at present. This typical trio now
exists only in the imagination of the lady novelist. When first the
little band of Savages met they smoked their calumets over a
public-house in the vicinity of Drury Lane, in a room with a sanded
floor; a chop and a pint of ale was their fare, and good-fellowship
atoned for lack of funds. The Brothers Brough, Andrew Halliday, Tom
Robertson, and other clever men were the original Savages, and the
latter in one of his charming pieces made capital out of an incident at
the Club. One member asks another for a few shillings. "Very sorry, old
chap, I haven't got it, but I'll ask Smith." Smith replies, "Not a cent
myself, but I'll ask Brown." Brown asks Robinson, and so on until a
Croesus is found with five shillings in his pocket, which he is only
too willing to lend. But this true Bohemianism is as dead as Queen Anne,
and the Savages now live merely on the traditions of the past. His
Majesty the King, when Prince of Wales, was a member of the Club, and an
Earl takes the chair and entertains my Lord Mayor with his flunkey