e had to be loaded with lands and gold and made an ancestor
of dukes, the elf-shaped ear is still recurrent in the family. Well, you
don't believe in black magic; and if you did, you couldn't use it for
copy. If a miracle happened in your office, you'd have to hush it up,
now so many bishops are agnostics. But that is not the point The point
is that there really is something queer about Exmoor and his family;
something quite natural, I dare say, but quite abnormal. And the Ear
is in it somehow, I fancy; either a symbol or a delusion or disease
or something. Another tradition says that Cavaliers just after James I
began to wear their hair long only to cover the ear of the first Lord
Exmoor. This also is no doubt fanciful.

The reason I point it out to you is this: It seems to me that we make
a mistake in attacking aristocracy entirely for its champagne and
diamonds. Most men rather admire the nobs for having a good time, but I
think we surrender too much when we admit that aristocracy has made even
the aristocrats happy. I suggest a series of articles pointing out how
dreary, how inhuman, how downright diabolist, is the very smell and
atmosphere of some of these great houses. There are plenty of instances;
but you couldn't begin with a better one than the Ear of the Eyres. By
the end of the week I think I can get you the truth about it.--Yours
ever, FRANCIS FINN.

Mr Nutt reflected a moment, staring at his left boot; then he called out
in a strong, loud and entirely lifeless voice, in which every syllable
sounded alike: "Miss Barlow, take down a letter to Mr Finn, please."

DEAR FINN,--I think it would do; copy should reach us second post
Saturday.--Yours, E. NUTT.

This elaborate epistle he articulated as if it were all one word; and
Miss Barlow rattled it down as if it were all one word. Then he took
up another strip of proof and a blue pencil, and altered the word
"supernatural" to the word "marvellous", and the expression "shoot down"
to the expression "repress".

In such happy, healthful activities did Mr Nutt disport himself, until
the ensuing Saturday found him at the same desk, dictating to the same
typist, and using the same blue pencil on the first instalment of Mr
Finn's revelations. The opening was a sound piece of slashing invective
about the evil secrets of princes, and despair in the high places of the
earth. Though written violently, it was in excellent English; but the
editor, as usual, had given to