Page THE REVEREND JOHN CREEDY 1 DR. GREATREX'S ENGAGEMENT 21 MR. CHUNG 47 THE CURATE OF CHURNSIDE 66 AN EPISODE IN HIGH LIFE 100 MY NEW YEAR'S EVE AMONG THE MUMMIES 126 THE FOUNDERING OF THE "FORTUNA" 144 THE BACKSLIDER 164 THE MYSTERIOUS OCCURRENCE IN PICCADILLY 191 CARVALHO 207 PAUSODYNE 234 THE EMPRESS OF ANDORRA 255 THE SENIOR PROCTOR'S WOOING 278 THE CHILD OF THE PHALANSTERY 301 OUR SCIENTIFIC OBSERVATIONS ON A GHOST 321 RAM DAS OF CAWNPORE 341 _THE REVEREND JOHN CREEDY._ I. "On Sunday next, the 14th inst., the Reverend John Creedy, B.A., of Magdalen College, Oxford, will preach in Walton Magna Church, on behalf of the Gold Coast Mission." Not a very startling announcement that, and yet, simple as it looks, it stirred Ethel Berry's soul to its inmost depths. For Ethel had been brought up by her Aunt Emily to look upon foreign missions as the one thing on earth worth living for and thinking about, and the Reverend John Creedy, B.A., had a missionary history of his own, strange enough even in these strange days of queer juxtapositions between utter savagery and advanced civilization. "Only think," she said to her aunt, as they read the placard on the schoolhouse-board, "he's a real African negro, the vicar says, taken from a slaver on the Gold Coast when he was a child, and brought to England to be educated. He's been to Oxford and got a degree; and now he's going out again to Africa to convert his own people. And he's coming down to the vicar's to stay on Wednesday." "It's my belief," said old Uncle James, Aunt Emily's brother, the superannuated skipper, "that he'd much better stop in England for ever. I've been a good bit on the Coast myself in my time, after palm oil and such, and my opinion is that a nigger's a nigger anywhere, but he's a sight less of a nigger in England than out yonder in Africa. Take him to England, and you make a gentleman of him: send him home again, and the nigger comes out at once in spite of you." "Oh, James," Aunt Emily put in, "how can you talk such unchristianlike talk, setting yourself up against missions, when we know that all the nations of the earth are made of one blood?"