He made no effort to stay me, but I could see that he was bursting to tell me something. At last, taking a religious paper from his pocket, and pointing to a column, he blurted out: "You don't take any interest in the Lord's vineyard, I suppose, sir?" I glanced at the part of the paper indicated. It announced a new mission to the Chinese, and heading the subscription list stood the name, "Mr. John Burridge, one hundred guineas." "You subscribe largely, Mr. Burridge," I said, handing him back the paper. He rubbed his big hands together. "The Lord will repay a hundredfold," he answered. "In which case it's just as well to have a note of the advance down in black and white, eh?" I added. His little eyes looked sharply at me; but he made no reply, and, shaking hands, I left him. THE HOBBY RIDER Bump. Bump. Bump-bump. Bump. I sat up in bed and listened intently. It seemed to me as if someone with a muffled hammer were trying to knock bricks out of the wall. "Burglars," I said to myself (one assumes, as a matter of course, that everything happening in this world after 1 a.m. is due to burglars), and I reflected what a curiously literal, but at the same time slow and cumbersome, method of housebreaking they had adopted. The bumping continued irregularly, yet uninterruptedly. My bed was by the window. I reached out my hand and drew aside a corner of the curtain. The sunlight streamed into the room. I looked at my watch: it was ten minutes past five. A most unbusinesslike hour for burglars, I thought. Why, it will be breakfast-time before they get in. Suddenly there came a crash, and some substance striking against the blind fell upon the floor. I sprang out of bed and threw open the window. A red-haired young gentleman, scantily clad in a sweater and a pair of flannel trousers, stood on the lawn below me. "Good morning," he said cheerily. "Do you mind throwing me back my ball?" "What ball?" I said. "My tennis ball," he answered. "It must be somewhere in the room; it went clean through the window." I found the ball and threw it back to him. "What are you doing?" I asked. "Playing tennis?" "No," he said. "I am just practising against the side of the house. It improves your game wonderfully." "It don't improve my night's rest," I answered somewhat surlily I fear. "I came down here for peace and quiet. Can't you do it in the daytime?" "Daytime!" he laughed. "Why it has been daytime for the last two hours. Never mind, I'll go round the other side." He disappeared round the corner, and set to work at the back, where he woke up the dog. I heard another window smash, followed by a sound as of somebody getting up violently in a distant part of the house, and shortly afterwards I must have fallen asleep again.