"I asked him as much, and he muttered something about a torn velvet patch. But his behaviour that day was monstrous odd altogether, for I remember I found him later on the bowling green of the _Blue Boar_ picking snowdrops, and when I rallied him, he asked me for a rhyme to 'white.'" Miss Morton danced for the rest of the evening as though her scarlet heels were little flames. The hands of the clock were nearing the magick hour of the last Cotillon, and everybody was hurrying in search of partners and places; when the appearance of Gog and Magog, with Mr. Ripple's marble pedestal, warned everybody that the Great little Man was about to make an announcement. Everybody waited with extreme deference and not a whisper disturbed the religious peace. The room was quite still save for the tinkle of jewellery and the slow sighing of the fans. The Beau ascended his pedestal, calm and majestick while the listeners craned their necks to attention. "My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen. You are doubtless all aware that we have to lament the sudden death of that respected model of fortitude and perseverance, Sir Jeremy Dummer." A sympathetick murmur floated along the wind of the fans. "I am happy to tell you that he died as he lived, fighting. He died, if I may use so vulgar a metaphor, in harness--the harness of an old war-horse who, having fought the foes of England during his prime, continued to fight the greatest foe of England during his decay. That energy which erstwhile displayed itself in the trenches of War enabled him for twenty-one years to persecute by every means in his power that enemy of all of us--the Gout. "He sought to starve it into capitulation by restricted diet, he tried to storm it by sudden charges of chalybeate. My lords, ladies and gentlemen, it was in the middle of one of these gallant sallies that he died. In a word, he was half-way through a glass of the cleansing liquid when death overtook him. There it stood, that partially empty glass beside the dead form of the veteran. May we not regard this relick as the tears of AEsculapius? Shall we not enshrine these sparkling drops in a lachrymatory and, having sealed the sacred fluid with the city seal, shall we not set it in a prominent part of our civick museum? My lords, ladies and gentlemen, we shall. I have consulted with my brother the Mayor of this town, and he has agreed. "Moreover, let me remind you of the last words of the great Socrates, his last injunction to his friend to sacrifice a cock to AEsculapius. Let us also, in memory of our deceased exemplar, present a new tap to our publick fountain and so sacrifice, my lords, ladies and gentlemen, not a cock, but a turncock to AEsculapius." The Great little Man here paused to wipe away the tears of sorrow and the heat of the atmosphere. "It seems," he continued, "out of place to make any announcement of a new diversion, but pleasure is as inexorable as death." Here the audience seemed to murmur a mournful assent.