"Been a dull companion to-day--have I?" "Why--but, Den!" Roy spoke in accents of amazement. "You never used to be anything of that sort! You never usen't to have anything at all the matter with you." "Didn't I? All right--what do you want me to look at now?" "Is it because you're a prisoner? Do you know, I couldn't get to sleep last night for ever so long--not till past eleven--thinking about it all. I say--don't you hate old Boney? I do. He makes everybody unhappy. Just think of that poor Marie and her son; if you and papa hadn't been there, she would have lost Jean, and perhaps she'd never have seen him again. Wasn't it horrid? And I don't see how men can fight properly, when they don't want to fight at all. Our soldiers fight, because they choose, not because they're made to whether they want it or not. I'm sure Jean didn't want to be a soldier, or he wouldn't have been so glad to get off." Mrs. Baron leant across to say softly, "Roy, do leave Denham in peace for a little while." "Why, ma'am, he likes me to talk. He always says so." Mrs. Baron looked again towards Ivor, with a dubious expression. (_To be continued._) VARIETIES. "WILLIE ONLY TOOK A HORSE." Horse-stealers in our time are a good deal handicapped by a change that has come over public opinion. The Government used to hang them, but the populace were by no means horrified at the crime. Here is a story indicating considerable former leniency in popular thought. A horse-coper "took" a horse and was discovered and convicted, but owing to some assistance he had given the police, he received a light sentence. He settled in a Norfolk village, turned an honest stock-breeder, and prospered greatly; but there was always a rumour that he had been convicted of some sort of stealing. A farmer's daughter, however, fell in love with him and he asked her from her father. "No," said the old yeoman; "I've nothing against you, but no child of mine shall wed a man who has been in trouble for stealing." The daughter cried and implored, and at last sobbed out, "Willie only took a horse." "Why," exclaimed the farmer, "didn't ye say so before! Here have I been treating a respectable man as if he had been a thief!" THE DEAD DEFUNCT. A learned weaver, in stating his case before the provost of Irvine in Ayrshire, in the days when hand-loom weaving was a leading industry in that town, having had occasion to speak of a party who was dead, repeatedly described him as the defunct. Irritated by the iteration of a word which he did not understand, the provost exclaimed-- "What's the use o' talking so much about this child you call the defunct? Cannot ye bring the man here and let him speak for himsel'?" "The defunct's dead, my lord!" replied the weaver. "Oh, that alters the case," gravely observed the wise provost. THE ART OF CONVERSATION. "Tell me," pleaded the artless maid, "wherein lies the secret of the art of conversation."