For ourselves we wrote many a learned treatise on the subject and sent many a thousand memos home to those authorities near to whose hearts the welfare of those Bonds should be. And after many months of this correspondence someone in the what-d'you-call-it office suddenly sat up and took notice and wrote to us as follows: "His Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for Thingummy has the honour to inform you that rumours have reached his ears concerning the existence of certain bonds, alleged to be Chinese, in the hands of Bolshevist agitators coming or intending to come to this country. You are requested to ascertain and report what, if anything, is known of these Chinese Bonds." I could have made a story for you of the uses to which the Bonds were put in other countries and newspapers as well as your own. But that painfully honest journal, _The Daily Herald_, has anticipated me. And anything more you want to know about the conspiracies or the conspirators you may now, as I judge from reading your Press, experience for yourself. So upon that these letters may end. I would like to have concluded by a protestation that, in making these frank statements as to the working of, and against, the Conspirators, I personally draw no pecuniary benefit of any sort, not a sovereign, not a bob, not a half-penny stamp. It is perhaps better, however, to anticipate discovery by owning up to the fact that my frankness is being paid for at so many pence per line. Yours ever, HENRY. (_Concluded_.) * * * * * [Illustration: _Nervous Party_. "ARE YOU SURE THAT LOBSTER'S ALL RIGHT?" _Fishmonger_ (_on his dignity_). "QUITE RIGHT, SIR. IF IT ISN'T WE SHALL BE HERE TO-MORROW." _Nervous Party_. "YES--BUT SHALL _I_ BE HERE TO-MORROW?"] * * * * * EPITAPH FOR A PROFESSOR OF TANGO: "_Nihil tetigit quod non ornavit_." * * * * * THE CAGE. He stood in the packed building, a small lonely figure, pathetic in the isolation that shut him off from the warm humanity of the watching crowd. He felt weak, ill, but he struggled to bear himself bravely. He could not move his eyes from the stern white face that seemed to fill all the space in front of him. About that cold minatory figure, which was speaking to him in such passionless even tones, clung an atmosphere of awe; the traditional robes of office lent it a majesty that crushed his will. He knew he was being addressed, and he strove to listen. His brain was a torrent of thoughts. And so his life had come to this. It was indeed the final catastrophe. That was surely what the voice meant--that voice which went on and on in an even stream of sound without meaning. Why had he come to this--in the flower of his life to lose its chiefest gift, Liberty?