The curio man wanted ten off me, and I paid it like a bird. Then you can fancy I studied the flags the Roebuck flew closely enough. Araby had said the figures was on the house-flag, and it was plain to see that there had been writing in ink on that flag and on both sides as Araby said. But it was clean faded off-just bits of yellow and smudge left. "I felt proper hoaxed. Besides, it gave me a kind of turn every time I looked at this ship, so I put it away in the bottom of a box of properties I use for another turn I seldom doHawaian with ukelele. It happened quite by chance that I was talking to a man in the tinned pineapple trade. He was a Yank, but a great one for going about to seaside resorts in this country, and I was telling him about my roarer, and how I had my bills worded, and we started in on the subject of advertising, and he told me that he considered one of the most wonderful advertising catches of all his experience in publicity was a riddle signboard at Perifordyce. That's how I got to hear of the bottled Roebuck. Well, I put two and two together like lightning, and made Pramaster. I thought of how Araby had said Pram would advertise in the papers if the bottle was lost. But since he'd said that, I argued, he'd had a murder to his credit. An advert in the papers wouldn't be quite the sort of thing he'd go in for. So he had no doubt hit on this Two days "Then I got a description of the man from him, and I was quite fixed in my idea that it was Pramaster, whatever he chose to call himself. But I couldn't help smiling at the notion of his swank creating himself captain. after I made a special trip down to Perifordyce with my bottled Roebuck and my roarer, and as soon as I clapped eyes on him I knew I was right. I thought he'd have known me in spite of the long time that had gone by and in spite of my moustache, which I didn't use to wear. It comes of being a born actor that I didn't behave a little nervous or foolish in front of him. But I was cool as a garden of cucumbers, and I looked him in the eyes as bold as Jumbo. I claimed his reward. But my voice troubled him. I bet it shook his conscience up like a dice-box. He wasn't so disappointed at the ink on the house-flag having faded as I had expected. When you come to think what a big fortune depended on that being I clear you'd expect him very near to drop down, but I suppose he'd made plenty of boodle with his old riddle, and the ghosts that guarded the treasure in the Pacific were grown stronger in his imagination than what the treasure was worth to him. Still, he was a good bit vexed. It was my voice, though, that was the chief thing as upset him. He let off some steam he'd better have kept to himself, and then he was a bit sorry and tried to put me off with the reward. But I knew by then, I'd already made up my mind that I'd be playing him a tune in the night, and if there was any truth in God's justice he'd be going the same way as Araby, so I couldn't take his dirty cash, and I walked off while he went for it. "But I came back again some time after midnight, and I shinned up that silly flagstaff he'd had stuck up in his garden to help make him more of a captain. "Your worships, I don't want to din it in what an artist I am on my instrument; I could do it well enough, and I'd done it well enough before when I'd wanted to shake the conscience of those murderers. But that night I think I was helped. I won't say it was the spirit of that dead girl, nor I won't say it was the spirit of that falsely accused brave old man Captain Mavis, nor I won't say it was God Almighty. I But a powerful spirit not of this world was with me when I leaned from the masthead in the dark and started. hardly knew I swung my arm. I could see the faces of those who were dead and gone looking from heaven solemn on me, and I felt my accusation driving red-hot into that murderer's heart. First, he lights up. Then he shoots out of the window wild into the dark. Then I hear him crash downstairs, and my arm finishes swinging. I know those faces are avenged. "Now, your worships, you can commit me to the assizes if it's your wish, but there's nothing in the law to convict me of more than trespass. Yet if you managed to twist the facts so that you got me to the gallows, I think I'd die as happy that way as in a bed." Having so spoken, the accused remained standing with a suspicion of forced pose like the hero in that melodrama called "The Only Way." The deaf magistrate, who had during the latter part of Hubbard's defence been puzzling over notes on the subject handed him by a brother justice, exclaimed, "What a cockand-bull story! Besides, I never heard of one man committing so many murders. Let's commit him to assizes and get on with the licensing." THE KANA BURHA. BY MAJOR-GENERAL SIR GEORGE MACMUNN, K.C.B., K.C.S.I. "But they'll hear it again in a grand refrain THE habit of story-telling is a vice that grows, and the stories come from many sources. They may be things that one has seen oneself and borne a hand in, they may be extracted by gin and cocktail at the bar counter, and they may be told in all solemnity by the man who knew to the man who can write. This is a story of the last category. It explains one or two incidents that have puzzled those in authority. The story is the story of a colonel, of a colonel as they are, and not a colonel of caricature. There are certain jokes that go on for ever, and always raise a laugh, such as the mother-in-law of fable; the War Office, even since it created the army that won the war; and the colonel as depicted in the pages of 'Punch '-that colonel who kneels by the sacrificial pile of golf sticks, or who plays round with the bishop to his edification; and the like. Then, too, since the war there is the colonel turned commissionaire, whose foot closes on the half-crown his late subaltern has dropped in his fright as the cab door closed. That is the story and the pathos of the British Legion. This story, however, is of the real colonel of the Regular Army, who has not a white moustache in a red face, and who does not frequent French watering-places, but perhaps lives in old tweeds in a country bungalow, while his sons are being educated, who digs in his garden, and runs the local scouts or any other unpaid job of service that his hand finds to do, waiting for the eventual call to "Pile your arms." And many of them are the salt of the earth. This is the story of such an one, whose nickname in the Indian Army, to which he belonged, was the Kana Burha, which is Hindustani for a one-eyed old man," and he had borne it for many a year, because he wore an eye-glass which never left his eye, or so men said, which, however, did not prevent him from being one of the finest colonels that ever made nine hundred sepoys serve an alien crown with joy and gladness. The Kana Burha -that will be name enough for him-had served all his life in the one regiment, had commanded it for seven years, and had left with a heart that was almost broken to bring up his boys, and nurse a slippery kneecap that made him feel he was past his best work. Now to spend all your life in one regiment is often a thought no thoughts but the ر آنا red's Of such as these was the Kana Burha, a man who had never spared himself, and Three years had passed, and the sorrow grew less poignant in the colonel's bungalow in the heart of the English countryside. The regiment still talked of the wise ways and doings of the Kana Burha, and letters still flowed regularly. The subahdar major, the senior Indian officer of the battalion, wrote twice a year. The Kana Burha when adjutant had enlisted him. They had slept under the same blanket on the top of Torsappa in Afridiland, when they held the ridge for three days and nights, and such things could not be forgotten. A row of medals in the silver-table in the drawing-room, placed by the wife under protest from the colonel, who after the strange way of the English seem to consider such things a disgrace, was one of the memories. A sword in a case with a silver-mounted pouch belt and his father's regimental sash, for these colonels come of a long line that goes from had ways to a father to son, each generation hand of organisation the poorer, was another. And brought modern so the years of pain and regret primitive country. A large were slipping by, when the army was fighting three huncall to arms came. War with dred miles from its base, and a very big W, the Indian Army no roads behind it nor rail, to come to France, and oh! and a tenth of the number the ache in the colonel's heart of steamers that were wanted that he could not take the to justify such extended action. battalion. No wharves or cranes or labour to clear the steamers that brought supplies and munitions, no dry spots to store them on, very few hospitals, no nurses, no hospital steamers; it was a hard bitter campaign, and failure was to be its guerdon in those earlier phases. "The grizzled drafts of years gone by were stirring in every village in the kingdom, and falling into any place that was vacant, and the colonel concealed his slippery kneecap, and volunteered to do any duty, however humble, that he could usefully do, and found himself on his way back to India for general duty. The battalion had not gone to France or Egypt, but was in Mesopotamia, and the Kana Burha settled down to quiet work in India to release more active men. India, too, was seething with war zeal, the grizzled drafts, as well as the young men, were coming from the villages, and the re-enforcing drafts were being turned out from the depots. Then it came about that the Kana Burha was ordered to go and take command of the troops on a troopship that was carrying drafts to Basra, and eagerly he went, in the glorious hope that he might see something of the battalion. Those were the days when Kut was yet besieged, and Aylmer was fighting mud and floods and rain as well as Turk in the endeavour to get his force up the Tigris. Those were days before the The colonel's transport sailed up the Shatt El Arab, along the miles and miles of datepalm orchards, and at length anchored off Ashar, which is the river port of Basra; and here a lucky thing happened, for the steering-gear of the vessel had fouled a cable, and it would take three weeks in that unfitted port to repair the damage. Eagerly the Kana Burha went to the general, and made petition that he might go up the Tigris to see his old regiment. The general saw the eager wistful look on the petitioner's face, and knew the call that called him. Sightseers and visitors were not welcome; but this was another story, and next day the Kana Burha found himself sitting in the cabin of what was once a Thames steamer chunking her way up the Tigris against a flood stream. The steamer was the Christopher Wren, and had come out in charge of an |