‘Are you ill, sir?’ said Jasper quickly and with a sort of anxiety unusual with him. It was impossible to avoid taking notice of the baronet's very evident emotion; impossible too not to connect the cause of it with the letter which Sir Sykes held in his hand. But the master of Carbery Chase rallied himself, and though his face was even ghastly in its pallor and his breath came painfully, he managed to smile as he rejoined: ‘Not ill. It is a mere pain, a spasm at most, which comes at times, but goes as quickly, or nearly so, as it comes. It is a trifle, not worth the talking about. It is getting late, and I have a note or two to write and some papers to look over before the dressing-bell rings. We shall meet at dinner presently.’ Jasper rose to go. ‘I hardly like’---- he began. ‘I am better; I am well; it is nothing,’ interrupted Sir Sykes irritably; and then blandly added: ‘I thank you, my dear boy, for your solicitude, but I am best alone.’ Jasper had not proceeded two paces along the carpeted corridor before he heard the key of the library door turned from within. ‘I'd give a cool hundred,’ said this exemplary youth, ‘to look over my father's shoulder as he reads that letter. To have a hold on the governor would’---- He left the rest of the sentence unspoken, and passed on, leaving Sir Sykes in the locked-up library to the company of his own solitary thoughts. TIGER-SHOOTING. Tiger-shooting in India differs a trifle from the tame pursuit of game in England--a very different thing indeed from the miserable amusement of the _battue_, in which hundreds of defenceless creatures are shot down without any chance of danger to the shooter. To go out tiger-shooting is to run the risk of encountering a deadly enemy, which on grounds of public policy it is of importance to destroy. So much as a preliminary observation.