But apart from the lower animal nature, in this barbaric sport you are never confident of your dearest friends. Thus, we had been a pleasant and hilarious party at the international _bal masqué:_ the ardour of the stirrup-cup was still upon us as we attained the brow of the decline. By a happy inspiration I had proposed that my friend Mr. STARK MUNRO, being a heavy-weight and disguised as a _Völsunga Saga_, should proceed in the van to clear any incidental drift or desultory avalanche. He disappeared headlong down the pine-forest track followed by the Ace of Clubs, a Sardinian Brigand, and a Tonsured Benedictine. All the costumes gained in picturesqueness from the Arctic background. The New Woman of the party, attired as Good Queen BESS, begged me to precede her, arguing that I should go faster on my Skeleton than she on her Swiss. I engaged to do so on the understanding that she should allow me seven minutes' start in case of eventualities, the course being usually done in some 5-3/4 minutes under happy conditions. She was to be succeeded by Antigone, the Spirit of the Engadine and the Mother of the Gracchi. I do not greatly care to linger over the details of my descent. I had started gaily humming those Elizabethan lines, "Fain would I climb, but that I fear to fall,"--out of pure gallantry to Good Queen BESS who had given me a dainty little cow-bell as a favour at the _cotillon;_ and I had been travelling cautiously for 8-1/2 minutes, with my nose, no fewer than six fingers, and all the toes on each foot frostbitten, and a half-moon piece already gone out of my calf at the spot where it had attracted the notice of the St. Bernard wolf-hound, when, even as I was navigating a rotten bridge at a sharp turn, I heard a rushing sound out of the night behind me, and "_Achtung!_" (the terrible warning-note of the tobogganer) rang in my stricken ear. I had barely time to throw a backward glance of horror and deprecation, when the projecting feet of Good Queen BESS, her toboggan and her spiked steering-pegs were upon me. The bridge had never been strong in point of bulwarks; the torrent which it spans is rapid and fed from icy heights; its banks do not lend themselves to debarkation. * * * When I recovered consciousness by force of exquisitely painful restoratives applied by the _Völsunga Saga_, the Mother of the Gracchi and Good Queen BESS (herself unscratched, though the plush of her toboggan was tarnished with my gore). I was solemnly intoning, "World without end: _Achtung!_" with all the conviction of a cathedral tenor. I am going home the day after to-morrow. * * * * * SUGGESTION.--A certain restaurant not a hundred miles away from the St. James's Theatre advertises, among other attractions, "_Dîner Salon Gobelin, 7s. 6d._" But wouldn't it be more appropriate to spell the last word "Gobbling"? * * * * * THE ECUADOR BONDHOLDER'S SONG. AIR--"_Toréador._"