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"What is to be done?" she not understand the look of whispered hopelessly. fresh horror that came into

"You cannot stay with him -like this," replied Brown. "We must tell Captain Spedley and arrange for a steward to nurse him."

"No, no," whispered Joan. "That would make him worse. He would be sure to think he had been caught. I must stay with him. I have quieted him twice-yet I am afraid."

"Then I must stay too. You cannot be alone with him. But first I want to try an experiment. If I can only convince him that he is innocent it might pull him round. Will you watch him for a few minutes? I shall not be long away. He is sleeping more quietly now.'

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"What do you mean to do?" asked Joan, a strange fear coming into her mind.

"Bring the real diamonds!" whispered Peter Brown.

He knew nothing of what she had been told earlier, and could

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The mistaken knowledge that she held, that he was a thief, had never really come home to her. It was in the past-away from her experience of him. But Lady Pilth's jewels! And he spoke calmly of the production of them, as though he had no shame in his guilt. She looked at him with a dumb horror.

"I shall be back almost at once," he said. "I hate to leave you alone with him, but this means so much, if it will only work."

He slipped from the cabin, and closed the door noiselessly behind him.

(To be continued.)

OUR GOATS.

SOME months ago my daughter, who is rather of an acquisitive disposition, suddenly electrified me at the breakfast table by the following announcement

"Father, I have quite made up my mind to buy either a monkey or a goat."

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As the young lady has a weird habit of getting her own way, I forbore to argue the point, and at once plumped for the latter animal. A goat, I reflected, would be kept in its proper place the stable or a shed-and would eat grass and superfluous vegetables; also it might on occasion act as an additional safetyvalve for the feelings of my much-respected but somewhat short-tempered housekeeper, who, when anything goes crisscross in the household, finds consolation in dosing my two long suffering dogs, who, strange to relate, simply adore her. I may add that I have been informed on good authority that the dogs really play the part of whippingboys to myself-in other words, that I am the real culprit, as having interfered with the housekeeper's province. In fact, "Quidquid delirant reges, plectuntur Achivi." All I can say is, that so long as the good lady does not interfere with my internal economy, I am content to let her have her own way either with dog-or goat. A goat, then, might be a tolerable if not wholly

welcome guest; but heaven preserve me from a monkey, which, for all I knew to the contrary, might be expected to eat and sleep inside the house. Moreover, the beast bites.

"Well, if you really want a goat, I'll give you one."

'A nice Nanny goat, father?"

"It certainly won't be a Billy," I responded, having many years ago had a far too intimate acquaintance with an evil-smelling patriarch of the tribe, who went by the name of "Sweet William." The very charming and hospitable family to whom William belonged kept him-so I was once informed-for old association's sake. My own experience of association with the old warrior was that he left his taint on hands and clothes for a solid fortnight.

"You'll have to milk the creature," I presently marked.

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"Oh! I shall love to milk her, and-you'll buy the milk.”

As the result of a telephonic communication with a friendly auctioneer, I reaped the following information :

1st. That ours being a goaty district, a good many of the animals came into the local market.

2nd. That owing to the War and other causes, the price for Nanny-goats ruled high, and I might have to pay as much as two guineas for a good specimen.

As the ordinary prices of the creatures were altogether unknown to me, I fixed two guineas as my limit, and awaited developments. On the afternoon of the following market day the auctioneer telephoned as follows:

"I have executed your commission. Will you send your car, or shall I hire a cart?"

Porterage and carriage not being cheap commodities in this part of the world, I elected to send my old car, and, not knowing whether goat might not turn out obstreperous-for I seemed to remember that Sweet William was never anything else than obstreperous on the journey, I took what turned out to be a very necessary precaution, sending in my strong-armed gardener and some coils of thinnish but quite reliable rope. An hour later the car returned, and my two men proceeded to unship not a single goat only, but a full cargo of the animals. I had got so far as "What the devil-" when the chauffeur handed me the auctioneer's memorandum.

"Goats ran cheap to-day, so I bought you this lot for 42s. 6d."

Now, as a rule, I may like to have a good run for my money, but when the run turned out to be a run of goats, I might have preferred a pecuniary sacrifice. The herd worked out at one brown Nanny with two brown Billy kids, one white Nanny with one white Billy kid; and whereas each and every member of

the party had to be extricated from his own or her own and somebody else's share of the rope, and when disentangled required to be held by some human being, most of my household were pressed into the service, and the yard fairly resounded with the plaintive bleatings of the captives.

"Now, where shall we put them, father! "

"Anywhere where they won't make that d-d noise."

Two loose-boxes were eventually assigned to the two families, and when the kids, which apparently wanted nourishment, presently got their mouths full and ceased talking, I was favoured with a dissertation on their pedigree.

"Do you know, father," said the owner of the goats, who, having borrowed a goat-book, had evidently studied the subject, "the white Nanny and her kid are Alpine goats, and the brown lot are Toggenburgs,— they are much the best sorts, much better than English goats."

"Because they make more noise?" I suggested.

"Of course not because they give more milk."

"Well, that's all right so long as they don't expect me to milk them."

"Oh, I shall love to milk them; I've often milked a cow."

"And what are they going to eat!"

"Oh, anything; goats eat anything you like to give them, and they live on very little."

The first part of this asser

tion proved to be literally true. The thing has yet to be discovered which the white Nanny, Victoria by name, the most omnivorous of the gang, will not eat with relish and digest with ease. Apart from her ordinary grass and vegetable diet she has sampled my straw hat, the contents of my tobaccopouch, the tails of my shootingcoat, the fringe of the housekeeper's skirt, &c.

Per contra, the idea that a goat will live on very little is absolutely erroneous-that is, unless by any accident our goats are exceptions to the rule. Neither Victoria nor Alexandra-the Toggenburg-ever seem to put on an ounce of flesh, but they are both blessed with weirdly healthy or, indeed on occasion, unhealthy appetites, and it seems to my untutored mind that every member of the goat tribe is prepared at any hour of the day to assimilate any form of food-in preference, I should add, to what is actually offered to it. Yew in any quantity is, I believe, fatal to most animals. As a natural result of the interdiction to eat yew, either of the matrons will do her level best to pull my arms out of joint in a prolonged struggle to get a real good mouthful off a yew-tree which she has to pass on her way to or from one of the recognised feeding-grounds. When on one fell occasion Victoria, tethered in the middle of most luxurious grass, managed to break her rope and at once proceeded to wreck four beds

of choice young rose-bushes, I found myself expected to find consolation in the remark: "Wasn't it lucky, father, that she did not go for the yewtree ! "

I must own that at that comparatively early date of our acquaintanceship I could better have spared Victoria than my roses.

On one occasion when my two men were having a real field - day at "tidying up" in the garden-i.e., trimming an over-redundant pear-tree, cutting back a collection of globe artichokes that had run into flower, reducing to its proper dimensions a mighty rambler rose, and clearing out the overgrowth of a too much crowded herbaceous border-I seized the opportunity of seeing how much a goat really would eat at a sitting. Victoria happened at the time to be otherwise occupied, and her diet was strictly limited, but Alexandra and Johnnie, the male kid, were tethered on the lawn, of which I commanded a good view. Between them in the course of the morning the pair devoured a full barrow-load of rose-cuttings, two huge cabbages, two good armfuls of pear-shoots, four large globe artichokes, with a plentiful allowance of stalk and leaves, and a varied assortment of stuff from the herbaceous border. der. Not for one minute, to the best of my belief, did either of the creatures slack off between 9.45 A.M. and 1.15 P.M., and I left them hard at it when I went in to lunch. On

my return an hour later they were taking a siesta after having accounted for everything within reach, but so soon as they caught sight of me they both bounded to their feet and asked for more.

Now what, I may be asked, are the leading characteristics of the goat Briefly the following:

1st. An intense desire to be
at all times and on all
occasions somewhere else.
2nd. A rooted determination
to eat every form and kind
of forbidden fruit.
3rd. A general inclination
to do those things that
ought not to be done, and
to leave undone those
things that ought to be
done.

To take the last-named first. It is a good goat's business to give milk, and I have every reason to believe that both Victoria and Alexandra are, what in the case of cows would be called, good milkers. But oh, the milking of the creatures! If Job was never called upon to milk an obstinate goat on a hot day, he was spared a very severe trial of patience. A week or so after the arrival of the herd the kids were duly weaned, the brown youngsters returned to the market, where they fetched the magnificent sum of five shillings; and as my daughter refused to part with Johnnie, the white kid, due precautions were taken to ensure that he should not taint the air after the manner of Sweet William.

That was a truly sweltering

afternoon in July when, as I was on the way to feed my poultry, a concourse in the yard attracted my attention, -a concourse that included my daughter, the housekeeper, two maids, the chauffeur, andVictoria. The first-named five members of the party, one and all, looked uncomfortably hot and not particularly amiable, and were relieving their feelings by hard talking; while Victoria, who was apparently harnessed to the pump, seemed to be comparatively cool, but otherwise uncomfortable. Having already discovered that for a human being I was really "quite decent," she greeted my arrival with an expressive bleat and a shrug of the shoulders, which seemed to imply, "Did you ever see such a lot of sillies in your life! I wish they'd leave me alone."

"What are you doing with the old lady?" I inquired.

"Milking her," was the answer of the chorus, and then I saw that they had got a small milk-pail, not absolutely empty, but perhaps with an egg-cupful of milk in it.

"You don't seem to have got much milk," I remarked.

"Perhaps you'd like to milk her yourself," snapped my daughter.

"Not my goat," I replied shortly; and then, as a happy thought struck me, "Why don't you send for Pakes!"

Pakes. I should say, a farmer's bailiff, is one of the handiest men with animals that I ever encountered, and one of the most obliging

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