He was very wroth, and swore, I should say, as lustily as the old maids' nephew's parrot could have done. He was a lawyer, too, and wanted to go into the legal aspects of the case. I assured him that they did not interest me, unless I had some ground of action against Mr. Joseph Scorer for the disturbance of my peaceful possession of his much-let habitation. He was a good fellow on the whole, and he left me his name and business address, and made me promise to let him know if I ever found out where Mr. Scorer had gone to, and also to refer to him any of the outraged claimants to the cottage who wished to take legal action in the matter. His wife and the youngsters had been peering out anxiously at us from the back windows of the bus while this colloquy was taking place. The father explained the matter to them, and, with a wave of his hand to me, they drove crestfallen back to Eastnor. On Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, variously-composed parties arrived with their baggage, and I turned them all away, and sent them to find lodgings in Eastnor, suffering much in the doing of it from their unnatural ill-humours and chagrin. On Saturday there arrived a rollicking reading-party of students from Oxford with a coach. I explained my painful situation and experiences, and informed them that they made the eighth party I had had to repulse. They were merry, good-humoured fellows, and they lay flat on my patch of lawn and fairly screamed with delight at the cuteness of Mr. Joseph Scorer. "He was born an Oxford gyp," they averred. [Illustration: "THEY SCREAMED WITH DELIGHT AT THE CUTENESS OF MR. SCORER."] They enjoyed the affair so much that I could hardly get rid of them. My wife gave them tea and cakes, and they sat and smoked, and laughed, and joked, till the stars were up, and then they got a carriage and drove off to the hotel, after promising to come up every day about noon to assist me in my hateful task of holding the fort against all comers. And they did it, too, and enjoyed it immensely. On the pier, on Sunday morning after church, we met at intervals all the families who ought to have been stopping in Sandybank Cottage. The irate first old gentleman stopped me to ask, "Well, how are you getting on? Say, that was the nastiest trick I ever was served. If I could find Mr. Scorer I would jolly well like to wring his nasty little neck." I said I felt that way myself, but I feared there was not much chance of laying hands on it. I told him I had now had to send away eight different parties who all claimed the cottage, and at that he felt very much better. My lawyer friend was just passing, and I introduced him to the old gentleman, and, catching sight of my young friends from Oxford, I introduced them all to one another, and they all had a very lively time together, and enjoyed themselves extremely.