"Now I consider that you gentlemen are partly to blame for that, and I bear no malice, only I wish you'd be a little more particular. Now if you'll just correct one report: Mrs. Pallinder's necklace did _not_ cost five thousand dollars. It cost--ah--well, gentlemen, it was a present to my wife on our last wedding anniversary, and to let the cat out of the bag, it was bought with the surplus of a little flyer in Phosphate I took--now I beg you won't say anything about that in the papers--you might say, with entire truth, that it did _not_ cost five thousand dollars. The necklace and earrings together came to more than that, and I believe I bought her some other trinket at the time, a brooch or something--but the whole business was not more than eight or nine thousand, and no one item was quite as much as five. Now if you'll just revise that statement, I'd be obliged. Sam, bring the whisky." J. B., reading the colonel's version slightly condensed, with the truth about the diamonds carefully set forth, chuckled freely. "Well," he said. "That was about the way it happened. But you ought to have heard old Mrs. Botlisch! She indulged in very meaty language, I never heard meatier, not even from a darky roustabout on the levee at New Orleans--you know somebody said she'd been cook on a canal-boat, and I declare I shouldn't wonder if that were true. She was mad at being waked up, mad at 'Mirandy,' mad at 'Bill,' mad at Teddy and me, and the thief and the diamonds and everything else. But let me tell you about Pallinder. We started out to ransack the park; you know how it was last Tuesday, a cold, sleety January night, without any snow falling, or we could have followed the fellow's tracks. As it was we just had to go prowling around the walls, and into the shrubbery. I had an old bird-gun of the colonel's, that hadn't been fired for years. It was a muzzle-loader, with a kind of sawed-off barrel, and I'll bet it would scatter like a charge of bribery in the State Legislature. Pallinder hadn't anything but one of these little light rattan canes. When we got down to the gate, somebody bounced out of hiding and ''Alt!' says he, in a shrill voice. ''Alt!' That fellow Huddesley is English, you know, and drops his _h_'s; he's an awfully funny little chap. Well, I ''alted.' I was taken by surprise, and I didn't want to let fly with my blunderbuss without knowing what it was all about. But what do you think Pallinder did? Walked right up to him, took him by the collar and pulled him out--yes, sir, that's what the colonel did, without hesitating one instant. Pretty cool, I call it, for a man of his age, practically unarmed, with a lame leg. Of course, I wasn't frightened; there was nothing to frighten anybody, and besides I had a gun; but I wasn't sharp and ready like the colonel; I hesitated. But Pallinder walked right up, collared him and pulled him forward. 'Come out o' that!' says he. 'Who are you?' 'Oh, Lord, Colonel Pallinder, sir, is it