_The Porter_. Peg your bardons, Schendlemen, but if you haf qvide done vid ze schtamps on your ledders, I gollect bostage schtamps, yes. _Culch._ (_irritably flinging him the envelope_). Oh, confound it all. take them. _I_ don't want them! (_He looks at his letter once more._) I say, PODBURY, it--it's worse than I thought. This thing's a week old! Must have been lying in my rooms all this time--or else in that infernal Italian post! _Podb._ Whew, old chap! I say, I wouldn't be _you_ for something! Won't you catch it when you _do_ turn up? But look here--as things are, we may as well travel _home_ together, eh? _Culch._ (_with a flicker of resentment_). In spite of my tendency to "jaw" and "jabber"? _Podb._ Oh, never mind all that now. We're companions in misfortune, you know, and we'd better stick together, and keep each other's spirits up. After all, you're in a much worse hat than _I_ am! _Culch._ If _that's_ the way you propose to keep my spirits up!--But let us keep together, by all means, if you wish it, and just go and find out when the next train starts, will you? (_To himself, as PODBURY departs._) I must put up with him a little longer, I suppose. Ah me! _How_ differently I should be feeling now, if HYPATIA had only been true to herself. But that's all over, and I daresay it's better so ... I daresay! [_He strolls into the hotel-garden, and begins to read his Chief's missive once more, in the hope of deciphering some faint encouragement between the lines._ FINIS. * * * * * A TENNYSONIAN FRAGMENT. [Illustration] So in the village inn the Poet dwelt. His honey-dew was gone; only the pouch, His cousin's work, her empty labour, left. But still he sniffed it, still a fragrance clung And lingered all about the broidered flowers. Then came his landlord, saying in broad Scotch, "Smoke plug, mon," whom he looked at doubtfully. Then came the grocer, saying, "Hae some twist At tippence," whom he answered with a qualm. But when they left him to himself again, Twist, like a fiend's breath from a distant room Diffusing through the passage, crept; the smell Deepening had power upon him, and he mixt His fancies with the billow-lifted bay Of Biscay, and the rollings of a ship. And on that night he made a little song, And called his song "_The Song of Twist and Plug_," And sang it: scarcely could he make or sing. "Rank is black plug, though smoked in wind and rain; And rank is twist, which gives no end of pain; I know not which is ranker, no, not I. "Plug, art thou rank? Then milder twist must be; Plug, thou art milder; rank is twist to me. O Twist, if plug be milder, let me buy. "Rank twist, that seems to make me fade away, Rank plug, that navvies smoke in loveless clay, I know not which is ranker, no, not I.