outspoken views. "Mr. Mirlees had something of the scholarly recluse in his disposition, and was personally known to but few residents in this country; he was, nevertheless, well liked and admired by such as were privileged to enjoy his friendship, and his death while still in the prime of life--he was in his thirty-seventh year--will be universally deplored." The foregoing item of news came to me with a peculiar poignancy and shock. I was one of those few persons quoted in the report as having enjoyed the privilege of Mirlees' friendship. I had not known him intimately, it is true, or for any great stretch of time, but there are circumstances which cement friendship more swiftly by far than mere knowledge of a man's history and companionship with him in the common workaday run of the world. If to have shared a strange and perilous adventure and to have escaped with him a horrible death by violence be title to friendship, I was indeed the friend of Ronald Mirlees. The details of this affair I have recorded elsewhere, and need not recount at any length here. It is enough to say that after making Mirlees' acquaintance in the queerest and most unconventional manner I accompanied him on an expedition to an ancient Buddhist temple some forty miles out from the city of Peking, where, by deciphering the inscription carved on the inner surface of the great temple bell, Mirlees hoped to locate a rich hoard of buried gems, an offering to the shrine by some pious donor of the remote past. How we were received by the last surviving priest of the sect, how he most subtly and devilishly plotted to murder us both, how he lost his own life in the attempt and was even instrumental in directing us straight to the cache, and how we took possession and escaped with our bare lives, pursued by a band of the local peasantry out to kill--these matters, as I say, have been chronicled in another place. After that episode Mirlees returned to Shanghai, which he was wont to make his headquarters, and I heard no more of him until the publication of that remarkable book entitled _Treasure of Asia_ sent his name whooping round the erudite world. Our North China adventure was not specifically recorded in that work: I imagine that Mirlees judged the affair too recent to be safely alluded to, fearing lest our ownership of the treasure trove be disputed; but it unquestionably afforded to himself, if he needed such, a crowning proof of the soundness of his views, to say nothing of ample funds wherewith to meet the expense of publication.