“I'm Commander A--------” said he, taking the despatch envelope and tearing it open. He gave a whistle, reading his message, and rose. “No reply,” he told the messenger, and then turned to me. “Great King Jehoshaphat!” he said in a low tone. “There is to be no demobilisation of the Fleet, and all leave is stopped. I'm ordered to report. And you said just now that nothing was going to happen. Good-bye, old chap! I've got to catch the 6.20 for Devonport!” We had been talking over the morning's news, and I had said that the Emperor was a master of bluff, not business. “I'm off,” he said. “You needn't say anything that I've told you. After all, it may only be a precautionary measure.” He went off; and I never saw him again. The precautionary measure that saved England from the swoop that Germany hoped to bring off as successfully as Japan did hers at Port Arthur in 1904, was taken not by the First Lord of the Admiralty, but by Prince Louis of Battenberg, who was hounded out of the Service by the clamorous gossip of a few women who could find no other way of proving their power. And the First Lord of the Admiralty let him go; while he himself returned to his “gambling”--he so designated the most important--the most disastrous--incident of his Administration--“a legitimate gamble.” A legitimate gamble that cost his country over fifty thousand lives! Within a month of the holding of that garden party our host had marched away with his men, and within another month our dear hostess was a widow. ***** That garden, I think, has a note of distinction about it that is not shared by any other within the circle taken by the walls of the little town, several interesting fragments of which still remain. The house by which it was once surrounded before the desire for “short cuts” caused a road to be made through it, is by far the finest type of a minor Elizabethan mansion to be found in our neighbourhood. It is the sort of house that the house-agents might, with more accuracy than is displayed in many of their advertisements, describe as “a perfect gem.” It has been kept in good repair both as regards its stone walls and its roof of stone slabs during the three hundred--or most likely four hundred years of its existence, and it has not suffered from that form of destruction known as restoration. It had some narrow escapes in its time, however. An old builder who had been concerned in some of the repairs shook his head sadly when he assured me that a more pigheaded gentleman than the owner of the house at that time he had never known.