While I am, of course, a part of the Little Red Doctor's large practice, I do not add much to his meager income. In fact, he usually laughs me and my minor ailments out of court and declines to administer anything but free advice. On the particular June evening when I unwittingly became a partner of the fates, nothing really ailed me except that I had not been sleeping for some nights and was tired of it. The Little Red Doctor went over me briefly and prescribed. “One full day in the open sunrise to sundown.” “Where?” He reflected. “Go crêpe-hunting with Dead-Men's-Shoes,” he said at length. Thus it was that from nine o'clock on, of a balmy, sweet-scented morning, the sleek and raucous automobiles of West-Chester County hooted disdainfully at Dadmun Schütz and myself, jogging appreciatively along behind Schutz's mouse-hued mare, Dolly Gray, through a world so alien to Our Square as to suggest another scheme of creation; a world of birds and butterflies and bees and trees and flowers and song and color and blithe winds. [Illustration: Jogging appreciatively along behind Schutz's mouse-hued mare 420] This world was, most appropriately, inhabited by a brown-and-gold fairy. Any one could tell that she was a fairy by the sunlight in her hair, and the starlight in her eyes, and the fact that, at the moment when we discovered her, two butterflies were engaged in aerial combat to decide winch one should settle on the pink rose above her ear. The flower flaunted there like a challenge against the somberness of her costume, for the fairy was dressed entirely in black. She was leaning on a gate in a tall hedge. Through the opening we could see, across broad flower gardens, a solid, spacious, kindly house, amid rustling shade, flying the insignium of death at its door. At the sight Dead-Men's-Shoes pulled up and took off his extinct hat. It was one of the most extinct hats wherewith I have ever known him to grace his calling. Its brim was fractured in two places, its crown leaned like Pisa's Tower, and it bristled in universal offense against the outer world. Despite all this it was indisputably a Silk Hat, and, as such, official to the lawful occasions of the wearer. The brown-and-gold fairy looked at it with unfeigned surprise. From its interior Dead-Men's-Shoes extracted a slip of paper which he perused. He then addressed the fairy in a soft and respectful tone. “You ain't on the list, mum.” “What list?” inquired the fairy with interest. “And why should I be on it?” “Not you, mum. The house.” He re-covered his head and contemplated her speculatively. She returned his regard with sparkling eyes and a dimpling and twitching mouth. “Why do you wear that extraordinary hat?” she broke out. “Business,” murmured Dead-Men's-Shoes. “It's my business hat. If I could have a few words with you on business?” “You've come at an unfortunate time,” said the brown-and-gold fairy. “There is a death in the family.”