you?' says Huddesley, trembling all over. He was the worst scared man you ever saw. 'Hi didn't know you. The doctor will be 'ere in two twos, sir. 'E told me to 'alt hanybody Hi saw.' And then along came Doctor Vardaman with a lantern. 'What on earth is all this?' he said. 'Is this your chicken-thief, Huddesley?' "As we went back to the house, I said to the colonel: 'That was rather startling, wasn't it, being shouted at to halt that way?' He laughed and said yes, it reminded him of a time he rode head foremost into the Yankee pickets one night--'when both armies were manoeuvring around the Potomac basin--not very long before Chancellorsville, you know. I was carrying despatches,' he said. I asked him what he did. 'Well, I guess I did about two-forty, and it wasn't over a very good track either!' he said and laughed again. 'I lit right out. They shot my horse. I wasn't lame then, though.' And I couldn't get another word out of him. I wish he'd talk simply like that all the time," the young man added, thoughtfully. "Instead of gassing around so much." J. B. himself declined to be interviewed--amiably enough, but still he declined. And Doctor Vardaman was another to whom the reporters appealed in vain. "The circumstances are exactly as Colonel Pallinder related them," he said to the only one whom he would consent to see. "And there is really nothing for me to say. I had gone to bed when my man Huddesley pounded on the door and called me. I got up and found him breathless, and very much excited; he was half-dressed, had been out of doors, and as I could see, was badly frightened. One cannot expect heroic behaviour in a man of his calibre, and on the whole I think he showed a very good spirit. As soon as I understood what he had seen, I ordered him to go outside and wait until I got my clothes on, and to challenge anyone he might see about the park gate, for I immediately suspected that my chicken-house would not offer much inducement to a thief alongside of Mrs. Pallinder's diamonds. The man has been quite sick since from exposure and excitement. I wish you a very good-day, sir."