"I wouldn't have done it for worlds, if I had known!" he protested very sincerely. "Well," she said, a little mollified, "I am very sorry we've all disturbed you like this, Mr.--Mr. Flushington" (the unlucky man said something about not minding it now); "and now, Fred, perhaps you will show us the way to the right rooms?" "Come along, then!" said he; "I'll run down and tell them to send up some lunch" (they did not explain that they had lunched already). "You come, too, Flushington, and then after lunch you and I will row the ladies up to Byron's Pool?" "Yes, do come, Mr. Flushington," the ladies said kindly. But Flushington wriggled out of it. To begin with, he did not consider he knew his neighbor sufficiently well; besides, he had had enough of female society for one day. Indeed, long after that, he would be careful in fastening his door about luncheon-time, and if he saw any person in Cambridge who looked as if she might by any possibility turn out to be a relation, he would flee down a back street. THE SILHOUETTES By A. T. QUILLER-COUCH The small round gentleman who had come all the way to Gantick village from the extreme south of France, and had blown his flageolet all day in Gantick street without exciting its population in the least, was disgusted. Toward dusk he crossed the stile which divides Sanctuary Lane from the churchyard and pausing, with a leg on each side of the bar, shook his fist back at the village, which lay below, its gray roofs and red chimneys just distinguishable here and there, between a foamy sea of apple-blossom and a haze of bluish smoke. He could not very well shake its dust off his feet, for this was hardly separable from the dust of many other places on his boots, and also it was mostly mud. But his gesture betokened extreme malevolence. "These Cor-rnishmen," he said, "are pigs all. There is not a Cor-rnishman that is not a big pig." He lifted the second leg wearily over the bar. "As for Art--phit! Moreover, they shut up their churches." This was really a serious matter for he had not a penny-piece in his pocket, the last had gone to buy a loaf--and there was no lodging to be had in the village. The month was April, a bad time to sleep in the open; and though the night drew in tranquilly upon a day of broad sunshine, the earth had by no means sucked in the late heavy rains. The church-porch, however, had a broad bench on either side and faced the south, away from the prevailing wind. He had made a mental note of this early in the day, being schooled to anticipate such straits as the present. As he passed up the narrow path between the graves, with a gait like a limping hare's, he scanned his surroundings carefully.