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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Scally, by Ian Hay
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Scally
+       The Story of a Perfect Gentleman
+
+
+Author: Ian Hay
+
+
+
+Release Date: April 4, 2009  [eBook #28495]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SCALLY***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Emmy, and the Project Gutenberg
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
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+
+
+
+
+
+SCALLY
+
+The Story of a Perfect Gentleman
+
+by
+
+IAN HAY
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+By Ian Hay
+
+          SCALLY: THE STORY OF A PERFECT GENTLEMAN. With Frontispiece.
+          A KNIGHT ON WHEELS.
+          HAPPY-GO-LUCKY. Illustrated by Charles E. Brock.
+          A SAFETY MATCH. With frontispiece.
+          A MAN'S MAN. With frontispiece.
+          THE RIGHT STUFF. With frontispiece.
+
+          HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
+          BOSTON AND NEW YORK
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: THE LEADING OBJECT PROVED TO BE A SMALL, WET, SHIVERING,
+WHIMPERING PUPPY]
+
+
+SCALLY
+
+The Story of a Perfect Gentleman
+
+by
+
+IAN HAY
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+Boston and New York
+Houghton Mifflin Company
+MDCCCCXV
+
+Copyright, 1914, by the Curtis Publishing Company
+Copyright, 1915, by Ian Hay Beith
+All Rights Reserved
+
+Published November 1915
+
+
+
+
+SCALLY
+
+
+
+
+SCALLY
+
+THE STORY OF A PERFECT GENTLEMAN
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+"BETTERSEA trem? Right, miss!" My wife, who has been married long
+enough to feel deeply gratified at being mistaken for a maiden lady,
+smiled seraphically at the conductor, and allowed herself to be hoisted
+up the steps of the majestic vehicle provided by a paternal county
+council to convey passengers--at a loss to the ratepayers, I
+understand--from the Embankment to Battersea.
+
+Presently we ground our way round a curve and began to cross Westminster
+Bridge. The conductor, whose innate cockney bonhomie his high official
+position had failed to eradicate, presented himself before us and
+collected our fares.
+
+"What part of Bettersea did you require, sir?" he asked of me.
+
+I coughed and answered evasively:--
+
+"Oh, about the middle."
+
+"We haven't been there before," added my wife, quite gratuitously.
+
+The conductor smiled indulgently and punched our tickets.
+
+"I'll tell you when to get down," he said, and left us.
+
+For some months we had been considering the question of buying a dog,
+and a good deal of our spare time--or perhaps I should say of my spare
+time, for a woman's time is naturally all her own--had been pleasantly
+occupied in discussing the matter. Having at length committed ourselves
+to the purchase of the animal, we proceeded to consider such details as
+breed, sex, and age.
+
+My wife vacillated between a bloodhound, because bloodhounds are so
+aristocratic in appearance, and a Pekinese, because they are _dernier
+cri_. We like to be _dernier cri_ even in Much Moreham. Her younger
+sister, Eileen, who spends a good deal of time with us, having no
+parents of her own, suggested an Old English sheep dog, explaining that
+it would be company for my wife when I was away from home. I coldly
+recommended a mastiff.
+
+Our son John, aged three, on being consulted, expressed a preference for
+twelve tigers in a box, and was not again invited to participate in the
+debate.
+
+Finally we decided on an Aberdeen terrier, of an age and sex to be
+settled by circumstances, and I was instructed to communicate with a
+gentleman in the North who advertised in our morning paper that Aberdeen
+terriers were his specialty. In due course we received a reply. The
+advertiser recommended two animals--namely, Celtic Chief, aged four
+months, and Scotia's Pride, aged one year. Pedigrees were inclosed, each
+about as complicated as the family tree of the House of Hapsburg; and
+the favor of an early reply was requested, as both dogs were being hotly
+bid for by an anonymous client in Constantinople.
+
+The price of Celtic Chief was twenty guineas; that of Scotia's Pride,
+for reasons heavily underlined in the pedigree, was twenty-seven. The
+advertiser, who resided in Aberdeen, added that these prices did not
+cover cost of carriage. We decided not to stand in the way of the
+gentleman in Constantinople, and having sent back the pedigrees by
+return of post, resumed the debate.
+
+Finally Stella, my wife, said:--
+
+"We don't really want a dog with a pedigree. We only want something that
+will bark at beggars and be gentle with baby. Why not go to the Home for
+Lost Dogs at Battersea? I believe you can get any dog you like there for
+five shillings. We will run up to town next Wednesday and see about
+it--and I might get some clothes as well."
+
+Hence our presence on the tram.
+
+Presently the conductor, who had kindly pointed out to us such objects
+of local interest as the River Thames and the Houses of Parliament,
+stopped the tram in a crowded thoroughfare and announced that we were in
+Battersea.
+
+"Alight here," he announced facetiously, "for 'Ome for Lost Dawgs!"
+
+Guiltily realizing that there is many a true word spoken in jest, we
+obeyed him, and the tram went rocking and whizzing out of sight. We had
+eschewed a cab.
+
+"When you are only going to pay five shillings for a dog," my wife had
+pointed out, with convincing logic, "it is silly to go and pay perhaps
+another five shillings for a cab. It doubles the price of the dog at
+once. If we had been buying an expensive dog we might have taken a cab;
+but not for a five-shilling one."
+
+"Now," I inquired briskly, "how are we going to find this place?"
+
+"Haven't you any idea where it is?"
+
+"No. I have a sort of vague notion that it is on an island in the middle
+of the river, called the Isle of Dogs, or Barking Reach, or something
+like that. However, I have no doubt--"
+
+"Hadn't we better ask some one?" suggested Stella.
+
+I demurred.
+
+"If there is one thing I dislike," I said, "it is accosting total
+strangers and badgering them for information they don't possess--not
+that that will prevent them from giving it. If we start asking the way
+we shall find ourselves in Putney or Woolwich in no time!"
+
+"Yes, dear," said Stella soothingly.
+
+"Now I suggest--" My hand went to my pocket.
+
+"No, darling," interposed my wife, hastily; "not a map, please!" It is a
+curious psychological fact that women have a constitutional aversion to
+maps and railroad time-tables. They would rather consult a half-witted
+errand boy or a deaf railroad porter. "Do not let us make a spectacle of
+ourselves in the public streets again! I have not yet forgotten the day
+when you tried to find the Crystal Palace. Besides, it will only blow
+away. Ask that dear little boy there. He is looking at us so wistfully."
+
+Yes; I admit it was criminal folly. A man who asks a London street boy
+to be so kind as to direct him to a Home for Lost Dogs has only himself
+to thank for the consequence.
+
+The wistful little boy smiled up at us. He had a pinched face and large
+eyes.
+
+"Lost Dogs' 'Ome, sir?" he said courteously. "It's a good long way. Do
+you want to get there quick?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then if I was you, sir," replied the infant, edging to the mouth of an
+alleyway, "I should bite a policeman!" And, with an ear-splitting yell,
+he vanished.
+
+We walked on, hot-faced.
+
+"Little wretch!" said Stella.
+
+"We simply asked for it," I rejoined. "What are we going to do next?"
+
+My question was answered in a most incredible fashion, for at this
+moment a man emerged from a shop on our right and set off down the
+street before us. He wore a species of uniform; and emblazoned on the
+front of his hat was the information that he was an official of the
+Battersea Home for Lost and Starving Dogs.
+
+"Wait a minute and I will ask him," I said, starting forward.
+
+But my wife would not hear of it.
+
+"Certainly not," she replied. "If we ask him he will simply offer to
+show us the way. Then we shall have to talk to him--about hydrophobia,
+and lethal chambers, and distemper--and it may be for miles. I simply
+couldn't bear it! We shall have to tip him, too. Let us follow him
+quietly."
+
+To those who have never attempted to track a fellow creature
+surreptitiously through the streets of London on a hot day, the feat may
+appear simple. It is in reality a most exhausting, dilatory, and
+humiliating exercise. Our difficulty lay not so much in keeping our
+friend in sight as in avoiding frequent and unexpected collisions with
+him. The general idea, as they say on field days, was to keep about
+twenty yards behind him; but under certain circumstances distance has an
+uncanny habit of annihilating itself. The man himself was no hustler.
+Once or twice he stopped to light his pipe or converse with a friend.
+
+During these interludes Stella and I loafed guiltily on the pavement,
+pointing out to one another objects of local interest with the fatuous
+officiousness of people in the foreground of hotel advertisements.
+Occasionally he paused to contemplate the contents of a shop window. We
+gazed industriously into the window next door. Our first window, I
+recollect, was an undertaker's, with ready-printed expressions of grief
+for sale on white porcelain disks. We had time to read them all. The
+next was a butcher's. Here we stayed, perforce, so long that the
+proprietor, who was of the tribe that disposes of its wares almost
+entirely by personal canvass, came out into the street and endeavored to
+sell us a bullock's heart.
+
+Our quarry's next proceeding was to dive into a public house. We turned
+and surveyed one another.
+
+"What are we to do now?" inquired my wife.
+
+"Go inside, too," I replied with more enthusiasm than I had hitherto
+displayed. "At least, I think I ought to. You can please yourself."
+
+"I will not be left in the street," said Stella firmly. "We must just
+wait here together until he comes out."
+
+"There may be another exit," I objected. "We had better go in. I shall
+take something, just to keep up appearances; and you must sit down in
+the ladies' bar, or the snug, or whatever they call it."
+
+"Certainly not!" said Stella.
+
+We had arrived at this _impasse_ when the man suddenly reappeared,
+wiping his mouth. Instantly and silently we fell in behind him.
+
+For the first time the man appeared to notice our presence. He regarded
+us curiously, with a faint gleam of recognition in his eyes, and then
+set off down the street at a good pace. We followed, panting. Once or
+twice he looked back over his shoulder a little apprehensively, I
+thought. But we ploughed on.
+
+"We ought to get there soon at this pace," I gasped. "Hello! He's gone
+again!"
+
+"He turned down to the right," said Stella excitedly.
+
+The lust of the chase was fairly on us now. We swung eagerly round the
+corner into a quiet by-street. Our man was nowhere to be seen and the
+street was almost empty.
+
+"Come on!" said Stella. "He may have turned in somewhere."
+
+We hurried down the street. Suddenly, warned by a newly awakened and
+primitive instinct, I looked back. We had overrun our quarry. He had
+just emerged from some hiding place and was heading back toward the main
+street, looking fearfully over his shoulder. Once more we were in full
+cry.
+
+For the next five minutes we practically ran--all three of us. The man
+was obviously frightened out of his wits, and kept making frenzied and
+spasmodic spurts, from which we surmised that he was getting to the end
+of his powers of endurance.
+
+"If only we could overtake him," I said, hauling my exhausted spouse
+along by the arm, "we could explain that--"
+
+"He's gone again!" exclaimed Stella.
+
+She was right. The man had turned another corner. We followed him round
+hotfoot, and found ourselves in a prim little _cul-de-sac_, with villas
+on each side. Across the end of the street ran a high wall, obviously
+screening a railroad track.
+
+"We've got him!" I exclaimed.
+
+I felt as Moltke must have felt when he closed the circle at Sedan.
+
+"But where is the Dogs' Home, dear?" inquired Stella.
+
+The question was never answered, for at this moment the man ran up the
+steps of the fourth villa on the left and slipped a latchkey into the
+lock. The door closed behind him with a venomous snap and we were left
+alone in the street, guideless and dogless.
+
+A minute later the man appeared at the ground-floor window, accompanied
+by a female of commanding appearance. He pointed us out to her. Behind
+them we could dimly descry a white tablecloth, a tea cozy and covered
+dishes.
+
+The commanding female, after a prolonged and withering glare, plucked a
+hairpin from her head and ostentatiously proceeded to skewer together
+the starchy white curtains that framed the window. Privacy secured and
+the sanctity of the English home thus pointedly vindicated, she and her
+husband disappeared into the murky background, where they doubtless sat
+down to an excellent high tea. Exhausted and discomfited, we drifted
+away.
+
+"I am going home," said Stella in a hollow voice. "And I think," she
+added bitterly, "that it might have occurred to you to suggest that the
+creature might possibly be going from the Dogs' Home and not to it."
+
+I apologized. It is the simplest plan, really.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+IT was almost dark when the train arrived at our little country
+station. We set out to walk home by the short cut across the golf
+course.
+
+"Anyhow, we have saved five shillings," remarked Stella.
+
+"We paid half a crown for that taxi which took us back to Victoria
+Station," I reminded her.
+
+"Do not argue to-night, darling," responded my wife. "I simply cannot
+endure anything more."
+
+Plainly she was a little unstrung. Very considerately, I selected
+another topic.
+
+"I think our best plan," I said cheerfully, "would be to advertise for a
+dog."
+
+"I never wish to see a dog again," replied Stella.
+
+I surveyed her with some concern and said gently:--
+
+"I am afraid you are tired, dear."
+
+"No; I'm not."
+
+"A little shaken, perhaps?"
+
+"Nothing of the kind. Joe, what is that?"
+
+Stella's fingers bit deep into my biceps muscle, causing me considerable
+pain. We were passing a small sheet of water which guards the thirteenth
+green on the golf course. It is a stagnant and unclean pool, but we make
+rather a fuss of it. We call it the pond; and if you play a ball into it
+you send a blasphemous caddie in after it and count one stroke.
+
+A young moon was struggling up over the trees, dismally illuminating
+the scene. On the slimy shores of the pond we beheld a small moving
+object.
+
+A yard behind it was another object, a little smaller, moving at exactly
+the same pace. One of the objects was emitting sounds of distress.
+
+Abandoning my quaking consort I advanced to the edge of the pond and
+leaned down to investigate the mystery.
+
+The leading object proved to be a small, wet, shivering, whimpering
+puppy. The satellite was a brick. The two were connected by a string.
+The puppy had just emerged from the depths of the pond, towing the brick
+behind it.
+
+"What is it, dear?" repeated Stella fearfully.
+
+"Your dog!" I replied, and cut the string.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+WE spent three days deciding on a name for him. Stella suggested
+Tiny, on account of his size. I pointed out that time might stultify
+this selection of a title.
+
+"I don't think so," said Eileen, supporting her sister. "That kind of
+dog does not grow very big."
+
+"What kind of dog is he?" I inquired swiftly.
+
+Eileen said no more. There are problems that even girls of twenty cannot
+solve.
+
+A warm bath had revealed to us the fact that the puppy was of a dingy
+yellow hue. I suggested that we should call him Mustard. Our son John,
+on being consulted--against my advice--by his mother, addressed the
+animal as Pussy. Stella continued to favor Tiny. Finally Eileen, who was
+at the romantic age, produced a copy of Tennyson and suggested
+Excalibur, alleging in support of her preposterous proposition that
+
+          It rose from out the bosom of the lake.
+
+"The darling rose from out the bosom of the lake, too, just like the
+sword Excalibur," she said; "so I think it would make a lovely name for
+him."
+
+"The little brute waded out of a muddy pond towing a brick," I replied.
+"I see no parallel. He was not the product of the pond. Some one must
+have thrown him in, and he came out."
+
+"That is just what some one must have done with the sword," retorted
+Eileen. "So we'll call you Excalibur, won't we, darling little Scally?"
+
+She embraced the puppy warmly and the unsuspecting animal replied by
+frantically licking her face.
+
+However, the name stuck, with variations. When the puppy was big enough
+he was presented with a collar, engraved with the name Excalibur,
+together with my name and address. Among ourselves we usually addressed
+him as Scally. The children in the village called him the Scalawag.
+
+His time during his first year in our household was fully occupied in
+growing up. Stella declared that if one could have persuaded him to
+stand still for five minutes it would have been actually possible to
+see him grow. He grew at the rate of about an inch a week for the best
+part of a year. When he had finished he looked like nothing on earth. At
+one time we cherished a brief but illusory hope that he was going to
+turn into some sort of an imitation of a St. Bernard; but the symptoms
+rapidly passed off, and his final and permanent aspect was that of a
+rather badly stuffed lion.
+
+Like most overgrown creatures he was top-heavy and lethargic and very
+humble-minded. Still, there was a kind of respectful pertinacity about
+him. It requires some strength of character, for instance, to wade along
+the bottom of a pond to dry land, accompanied by a brick as big as
+yourself. It was quite impossible, too, short of locking him up, to
+prevent him from accompanying us when we took our walks abroad, if he
+had made up his mind to do so.
+
+The first time this happened I was going to shoot with my neighbors, the
+Hoods. It was only a mile to the first covert and I set off after
+breakfast to walk. I was hardly out on the road when Excalibur was
+beside me, ambling uncertainly on his weedy legs and smiling up into my
+face with an air of imbecile affection.
+
+"You have many qualities, old friend," I said, "but I don't think you
+are a sporting dog. Go home!"
+
+Excalibur sat down on the road with a dejected air. Then, having given
+me fifty yards start, he rose and crawled sheepishly after me. I
+stopped, called him up, pointed him with some difficulty in the
+required direction, gave him a resounding spank and bade him begone. He
+responded by collapsing like a camp bedstead, and I left him.
+
+Two minutes later I looked round. Excalibur was ten yards behind me,
+propelling himself along on his stomach. This time I thrashed him
+severely. After he began to howl I let him go, and he lumbered away
+homeward, the picture of misery.
+
+In due course I reached the crossroads where I had arranged to meet the
+rest of the party. They had not arrived, but Excalibur had. He had made
+a détour and headed me off. Not certain which route I would take after
+reaching the crossroads, he was sitting very sensibly under the
+signpost, awaiting my arrival. On seeing me he immediately came
+forward, wagging his tail, and placed himself at my feet in the position
+most convenient to me for inflicting chastisement.
+
+I wonder how many of our human friends would be willing to pay such a
+price for the pleasure of our company.
+
+As time went on Excalibur filled out into one of the most terrifying
+spectacles I have ever beheld. In one respect, though, he lived up to
+his knightly name. His manners were of the most courtly description and
+he had an affectionate greeting for all, beggars included. He was
+particularly fond of children. If he saw children in the distance he
+would canter up and offer to play with them. If the children had not met
+him before they would run shrieking to their nurses. If they had they
+would fall on Excalibur in a body and roll him over and pull him about.
+
+On wet afternoons, in the nursery, my own family used to play at dentist
+with him, assigning to Excalibur the rôle of patient. Gas was
+administered with a bicycle pump, and a shoehorn and buttonhook were
+employed in place of the ordinary instruments of torture; but Excalibur
+did not mind. He lay on his back on the hearth rug, with the principal
+dentist sitting astride his ribs, as happy as a king.
+
+He was particularly attracted by babies; and being able by reason of his
+stature to look right down into perambulators, he was accustomed
+whenever he met one of those vehicles to amble alongside and peer
+inquiringly into the face of its occupant. Most of the babies in the
+district got to know him in time, but until they did we had a good deal
+of correspondence to attend to on the subject.
+
+Excalibur's intellect may have been lofty, but his memory was
+treacherous. Our household will never forget the day on which he was
+given the shoulder of mutton.
+
+One morning after breakfast Eileen, accompanied by Excalibur,
+intercepted the kitchen maid hastening in the direction of the potting
+shed, carrying the joint in question at arm's length. The damsel
+explained that its premature maturity was due to the recent warm weather
+and that she was even now in search of the gardener's boy, who would be
+commissioned to perform the duties of sexton.
+
+"It seems a waste, miss," observed the kitchen maid; "but cook says it
+can't be ate nohow now."
+
+Loud but respectful snuffings from Excalibur moved a direct negative to
+this statement. Eileen and the kitchen maid, who were both criminally
+weak where Excalibur was concerned, saw a way to gratify their
+economical instincts and their natural affection simultaneously. The
+next moment Excalibur was lurching contentedly down the gravel path with
+a presentation shoulder of mutton in his mouth.
+
+Then Joy Day began. Excalibur took his prize into the middle of the
+tennis lawn. It was a very large shoulder of mutton, but Excalibur
+finished it in ten minutes. After that, distended to his utmost limits,
+he went to sleep in the sun, with the bone between his paws.
+Occasionally he woke up and, raising his head, stared solemnly into
+space, in the attitude of a Trafalgar Square lion.
+
+The bone now lay white and gleaming on the grass beside him. Then he
+fell asleep again. About four o'clock he roused himself and began to
+look for a suitable place of interment for the bone. By four-thirty the
+deed was done and he went to sleep once more. At five he woke up and
+pandemonium began. He could not remember where he had buried the bone!
+
+He started systematically with the rose beds, but met with no success.
+After that he tried two or three shrubberies without avail, and then
+embarked on a frantic but thorough excavation of the tennis lawn. We
+were taking tea on the lawn at the time, and our attention was first
+drawn to Excalibur's bereavement by a temporary but unshakable
+conviction on his part that the bone was buried immediately underneath
+the tea table.
+
+As the tennis lawn was fast beginning to resemble a golf course we
+locked Excalibur up in the washhouse, where his hyena-like howls rent
+the air for the rest of the evening, penetrating even to the
+dining-room. This was particularly unfortunate, because we were having a
+dinner party in honor of a neighbor who had recently come to the
+district, no less a personage, in fact, than the new lord-lieutenant of
+the county and his lady. Stella was naturally anxious that there should
+be no embarrassments on such an occasion, and it distressed her to think
+that these people should imagine that we kept a private torture chamber
+on the premises.
+
+However, dinner passed off quite successfully and we adjourned to the
+drawing-room. It was a chilly September evening and Lady Wickham was
+accommodated with a seat by the fire in a large armchair, with a cushion
+at her back. When the gentlemen came in Eileen sang to us. Fortunately
+the drawing-room is out of range of the washhouse.
+
+During Eileen's first song I sat by Lady Wickham. Her expression was one
+of patrician calm and well-bred repose, but it seemed to me she was not
+looking quite comfortable. I was not feeling quite comfortable myself.
+The atmosphere seemed a trifle oppressive: perhaps we had done wrong in
+having a fire after all. Lady Wickham appeared to notice it too. She sat
+very upright, fanning herself mechanically, and seemed disinclined to
+lean back in her chair.
+
+After the song was finished I said:
+
+"I am afraid you are not quite comfortable, Lady Wickham. Let me get you
+a larger cushion."
+
+"Thank you," said Lady Wickham, "the cushion I have is delightfully
+comfortable; but I think there is something hard behind it."
+
+Apologetically I plucked away the cushion. Lady Wickham was right; there
+was something behind it.
+
+It was Excalibur's bone!
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+A WALK along the village street was always a great event for
+Excalibur. Still, it must have contained many humiliating moments for
+one of his sensitive disposition; for he was always pathetically anxious
+to make friends with other dogs, but was rarely successful. Little dogs
+merely bit his legs and big dogs cut him dead.
+
+I think this was why he usually commenced his morning round by calling
+on a rabbit. The rabbit lived in a hutch in a yard at the end of a
+passage between two cottages, the first turning on the right after you
+entered the village, and Excalibur always dived down this at the
+earliest opportunity. It was no use for Eileen, who usually took him
+out on these occasions, to endeavor to hold him back. Either Excalibur
+called on the rabbit by himself or Eileen went with him; there was no
+other alternative.
+
+Arrived at the hutch, Excalibur wagged his tail and contemplated the
+rabbit with his usual air of vacuous benevolence. The rabbit made not
+the faintest response, but continued to munch green feed, twitching its
+nose in a superior manner. Finally, when it could endure Excalibur's
+admiring inspection and hard breathing no longer, it turned its back and
+retired into its bedroom.
+
+Excalibur's next call was usually at the butcher's shop, where he was
+presented with a specially selected and quite unsalable fragment of
+meat. He then crossed the road to the baker's, where he purchased a
+halfpenny bun, for which his escort was expected to pay. After that he
+walked from shop to shop, wherever he was taken, with great docility and
+enjoyment; for he was a gregarious animal and had a friend behind or
+underneath almost every counter in the village. Men, women, babies,
+kittens, even ducks--they were all one to him.
+
+At one time Eileen had endeavored to teach him a few simple
+accomplishments, such as begging for food, dying for his country, and
+carrying parcels. She was unsuccessful in all three instances. Excalibur
+on his hind legs stood about five feet six, and when he fell from that
+eminence, as he invariably did when he tried to beg, he usually broke
+something. He was hampered, too, by inability to distinguish one order
+from another. More than once he narrowly escaped with his life through
+mistaking an urgent appeal to come to heel out of the way of an
+approaching automobile for a command to die for his country in the
+middle of the road.
+
+As for educating him to carry parcels, a single attempt was sufficient.
+The parcel in question contained a miscellaneous assortment of articles
+from the grocer's, including lard, soap, and safety matches. It was
+securely tied up, and the grocer kindly attached it by a short length of
+string to a wooden clothespin, in order to make it easier for Excalibur
+to carry. They set off home.
+
+Excalibur was most apologetic about it afterward, besides being
+extremely unwell; but he had no idea, he explained to Eileen, that
+anything put into his mouth was not meant to be eaten. He then tendered
+the clothespin and some mangled brown paper, with an air of profound
+abasement. After that no further attempts at compulsory education were
+undertaken.
+
+It was his daily walk with Eileen, however, which introduced Excalibur
+to life--life in its broadest and most romantic sense. As I was not
+privileged to be present at the opening incident of this episode, or at
+most of its subsequent developments, the direct conduct of this
+narrative here passes out of my hands.
+
+One sunny morning in July a young man in clerical attire sat
+breakfasting in his rooms at Mrs. Tice's. Mrs. Tice's establishment was
+situated on the village street and Mrs. Tice was in the habit of letting
+her ground floor to lodgers of impeccable respectability.
+
+It was half-past eleven, which is a late hour for the clergy to
+breakfast; but this young man appeared to be suffering from no qualms of
+conscience on the subject. He was making an excellent breakfast and
+reading the Henley results with a mixture of rapture and longing.
+
+He had just removed the "Sportsman" from the convenient buttress of the
+teapot and substituted "Punch" when he became aware that day had turned
+to night. Looking up he perceived that his open window, which was rather
+small and of the casement variety, was completely blocked by a huge,
+shapeless, and opaque mass. Next moment the mass resolved itself into an
+animal of enormous size and surprising appearance, which fell heavily
+into the room, and
+
+          Like a stream that, spouting from a cliff,
+          Fails in mid-air, but, gathering at the base,
+          Remakes itself,
+
+rose to its feet and, advancing to the table, laid a heavy head on the
+white cloth and lovingly passed its tongue--which resembled that of the
+great anteater--round a cold chicken conveniently adjacent.
+
+Five minutes later the window framed another picture--this time a girl
+of twenty, white-clad and wearing a powder-blue felt hat, caught up on
+one side by a silver buckle which twinkled in the hot morning sun. The
+curate started to his feet. Excalibur, who was now lying on the
+hearthrug dismembering the chicken, thumped his tail guiltily on the
+floor, but made no attempt to rise.
+
+"I am very sorry," said Eileen, "but I am afraid my dog is trespassing.
+May I call him out?"
+
+"Certainly!" said the curate. "But"--he racked his brains to devise some
+means of delaying the departure of this radiant, fragrant vision--"he is
+not the least in the way. I am very glad of his company; it was most
+neighborly of him to call. After all, I suppose he is one of my
+parishioners. And--and"--he blushed--"I hope you are, too."
+
+Eileen gave him her most entrancing smile, and from that hour the curate
+ceased to be his own master.
+
+"I suppose you are Mr. Gilmore," said Eileen.
+
+"Yes. I have been here only three weeks and I have not met every one
+yet."
+
+"I have been away for two months," Eileen mentioned.
+
+"I thought you must have been," said the curate, rather subtly for him.
+
+"I think my brother-in-law called on you a few days ago," continued
+Eileen, on whom the curate's last remark had made a most favorable
+impression. She mentioned my name.
+
+"I was going to return the call this very afternoon," said the curate.
+And he firmly believed that he was speaking the truth. "Won't you come
+in? We have an excellent chaperon," indicating Excalibur. "I will come
+and open the door."
+
+"Well, he certainly won't come out unless I come and fetch him,"
+admitted Eileen thoughtfully.
+
+A moment later the curate was at the front door and led his visitor
+across the little hall into the sitting-room. He had not been absent
+more than thirty seconds, but during that time a plateful of sausages
+had mysteriously disappeared; and, as they entered, Excalibur was
+apologetically settling down on the hearthrug with a cottage loaf
+between his paws.
+
+Eileen uttered cries of dismay and apology, but the curate would have
+none of them.
+
+"My fault entirely!" he insisted. "I have no right to be breakfasting at
+this hour; but this is my day off. You see I take early Service every
+morning at seven; but on Wednesdays we cut it out--omit it and have
+full Matins at ten. So I get up at half-past nine, take Service at ten,
+and come back to my rooms at eleven and have breakfast. It is my weekly
+treat."
+
+"You deserve it," said Eileen feelingly. Her religious exercises were
+limited to going to church on Sunday morning and coming out, if
+possible, after the Litany. "And how do you like Much Moreham?"
+
+"I did not like it at all when I came," said the curate, "but recently I
+have begun to enjoy myself immensely." He did not say how recently.
+
+"Were you in London before?"
+
+"Yes--in the East End. It was pretty hard work, but a useful experience.
+I feel rather lost here during my spare time. I get so little exercise.
+In London I used to slip away for an occasional outing in a Leander
+scratch eight, and that kept me fit. I am inclined," he added ruefully,
+"to put on flesh."
+
+"Leander? Are you a Blue?"
+
+The curate nodded.
+
+"You know about rowing, I see," he said appreciatively. "The worst of
+rowing," he continued, "is that it takes up so much of a man's time that
+he has no opportunity of practicing anything else--cricket, for
+instance. All curates ought to be able to play cricket. I do my best;
+but there isn't a single boy in the Sunday School who can't bowl me.
+It's humiliating!"
+
+"Do you play tennis at all?" asked Eileen.
+
+"Yes, in a way."
+
+"I am sure my sister will be pleased if you come and have a game with us
+some afternoon."
+
+The enraptured curate had already opened his mouth to accept this demure
+invitation when Excalibur, rising from the hearthrug, stretched himself
+luxuriously and wagged his tail, thereby removing three pipes, an
+inkstand, a tobacco jar, and a half-completed sermon from the writing
+table.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+EXCALIBUR was heavily overworked in his new rôle of chaperon during
+the next three or four weeks, and any dog less ready to oblige than
+himself might have felt a little aggrieved at the treatment to which he
+was subjected.
+
+There was the case of the tennis lawn, for instance. He had always
+regarded this as his own particular sanctuary, dedicated to reflection
+and repose; but now the net was stretched across it and Eileen and the
+curate performed antics all over the court with rackets and small white
+balls which, though they did not hurt Excalibur, kept him awake. It did
+not occur to him to convey himself elsewhere, for his mind moved
+slowly; and the united blandishments of the players failed to bring the
+desirability of such a course home to him. He continued to lie in his
+favorite spot on the sunny side of the court, looking injured but
+forgiving, or slumbering perseveringly amid the storm that raged round
+him.
+
+It was quite impossible to move Excalibur once he had decided to remain
+where he was; so Eileen and the curate agreed to regard him as a sort of
+artificial excrescence, like the buttress in a fives court. If the ball
+hit him, as it frequently did, the player waiting for it was at liberty
+either to play it or claim a let. This arrangement added a piquant and
+pleasing variety to what is too often--especially when indulged in by
+mediocre players--a very dull game.
+
+Worse was to follow, however. One day Eileen and the curate conducted
+Excalibur to a neighboring mountain range--at least, so it appeared to
+Excalibur--and played another ball game. This time they employed long
+sticks with iron heads, and two balls, which, though they were much
+smaller than tennis balls, were incredibly hard and painful. Excalibur,
+though willing to help and anxious to please, could not supervise both
+the balls at once. As sure as he ran to retrieve one the other came
+after him and took him unfairly in the rear. Excalibur was the gentlest
+of creatures, but the most perfect gentleman has his dignity to
+consider.
+
+After having been struck for the third time by one of these balls he
+whipped round, picked it up in his mouth and gave it a tiny pinch, just
+as a warning. At least, he thought it was a tiny pinch. The ball
+retaliated with unexpected ferocity. It twisted and turned. It emitted
+long, snaky spirals of some elastic substance, which clogged his teeth
+and tickled his throat and wound themselves round his tongue and nearly
+choked him. Panic-stricken, he ran to his mistress, who, with weeping
+and with laughter, removed the writhing horror from his jaws and
+comforted him with fair words.
+
+After that Excalibur realized that it is wiser to walk behind golfers
+than in front of them. It was a boring business, though, and very
+exhausting, for he loathed exercise of every kind; and his only periods
+of repose were the occasions on which the expedition came to a halt on
+certain small, flat lawns, each of which contained a hole with a flag in
+it.
+
+Here Excalibur would lie down, with the contented sigh of a tired child,
+and go to sleep. As he almost invariably lay down between the hole and
+the ball, the players agreed to regard him as a bunker. Eileen putted
+round him; but the curate--who had little regard for the humbler works
+of creation, Excalibur thought--used to take his mashie and attempt a
+lofting shot, an enterprise in which he almost invariably failed, to
+Excalibur's great inconvenience.
+
+Country walks were more tolerable, for Eileen's supervision of his
+movements, which was usually marked by an officious severity, was
+sensibly relaxed on these days and Excalibur found himself at liberty to
+range abroad amid the heath and through the coppices, engaged in a
+pastime that he imagined was hunting.
+
+One hot afternoon, wandering into a clearing, he encountered a hare. The
+hare, which was suffering from extreme panic, owing to a terrifying
+noise behind it,--the blast of the newest and most vulgar motor horn, to
+be precise,--was bolting right across the clearing. After the manner of
+hares where objects directly in front of them are concerned, the
+fugitive entirely failed to perceive Excalibur and, indeed, ran right
+underneath him on its way to cover. Excalibur was so unstrung by this
+adventure that he ran back to where he had left Eileen and the curate.
+
+They were sitting side by side on the grass and the curate was holding
+Eileen's hand.
+
+Excalibur advanced on them thankfully and indicated by an ingratiating
+smile that a friendly remark or other recognition of his presence would
+be gratefully received; but neither took the slightest notice of him.
+They continued to gaze straight before them in a mournful and abstracted
+fashion. They looked not so much at Excalibur as through him. First the
+hare, then Eileen and the curate! Excalibur began to fear that he had
+become invisible, or at least transparent. Greatly agitated he drifted
+away into a neighboring plantation full of young pheasants. Here he
+encountered a keeper, who was able to dissipate his gloomy suspicions
+for him without any difficulty whatsoever. But Eileen and the curate sat
+on.
+
+"A hundred pounds a year!" repeated the curate. "A pass degree and no
+influence! I can't preach and I have no money of my own. Dearest, I
+ought never to have told you."
+
+"Told me what?" inquired Eileen softly. She knew quite well; but she was
+a woman, and a woman can never let well enough alone.
+
+The curate, turning to Eileen, delivered himself of a statement of three
+words. Eileen's reply was a softly whispered _Tu quoque!_
+
+"It had to happen, dear," she added cheerfully, for she did not share
+the curate's burden of responsibility in the matter. "If you had not
+told me we should have been miserable separately. Now that you have told
+me, we can be miserable together. And when two people who--who--" She
+hesitated.
+
+The curate supplied the relative sentence. Eileen nodded her head in
+acknowledgment.
+
+"Yes; who are--like you and me--are miserable together, they are happy!
+See?"
+
+"I see," said the curate gravely. "Yes, you are right there; but we
+can't go on living on a diet of joint misery. We shall have to face the
+future. What are we going to do about it?"
+
+Then Eileen spoke up boldly for the first time.
+
+"Gerald," she said, "we shall simply have to manage on a hundred a
+year."
+
+But the curate shook his head.
+
+"Dearest, I should be an utter cad if I allowed you to do such a thing,"
+he said. "A hundred a year is less than two pounds a week!"
+
+"A lot of people live on less than two pounds a week," Eileen pointed
+out longingly.
+
+"Yes; I know. If we could rent a three-shilling cottage and I could go
+about with a spotted handkerchief round my neck, and you could scrub the
+doorsteps _coram populo_, we might be very comfortable; but the clergy
+belong to the black-coated class, and people in the lower ranks of the
+black-coated class are the poorest people in the whole wide world. They
+have to spend money on luxuries--collars and charwomen, and so
+on--which a workingman can spend entirely on necessities. It wouldn't
+merely mean no pretty dresses and a lot of hard work for you, Eileen. It
+would mean starvation! Believe me--I know! Some of my friends have tried
+it--and I know!"
+
+"What happened to them?" asked Eileen fearfully.
+
+"They all had to come down in the end--some soon, some late, but all in
+time--to taking parish relief."
+
+"Parish relief?"
+
+"Yes; not official, regulation, rate-aided charity, but the infinitely
+more humiliating charity of their well-to-do neighbors--quiet checks,
+second-hand dresses, and things like that. No, little girl; you and I
+are too proud--too proud of the cloth--for that. We will never give a
+handle to the people who are always waiting to have a fling at the
+improvident clergy--not if it breaks our hearts, we won't!"
+
+"You are quite right, dear," said Eileen quietly. "We must wait."
+
+Then the curate said the most difficult thing he had said yet:--
+
+"I shall have to go away from here."
+
+Eileen's hand turned cold in his.
+
+"Why?" she whispered; but she knew.
+
+"Because if we wait here we shall wait forever. The last curate in Much
+Moreham--what happened to him?"
+
+"He died."
+
+"Yes--at fifty-five; and he had been here for thirty years. Preferment
+does not come in sleepy villages. I must go back to London."
+
+"The East End?"
+
+"East or south or north--it doesn't signify. Anywhere but west. In the
+east and south and north there is always work to be done--hard work. And
+if a parson has no money and no brains and no influence, and can only
+work--run clothing clubs and soup kitchens, and reclaim
+drunkards--London is the place for him. So off I go to London, my
+beloved, to lay the foundations of Paradise for you and me--for you and
+me!"
+
+There was a long silence. Then the pair rose to their feet and smiled on
+each other extremely cheerfully, because each suspected the
+other--rightly--of low spirits.
+
+"Shall we tell people?" asked the curate.
+
+Eileen thought, and shook her head.
+
+"No," she said; "nicer not. It will make a splendid secret."
+
+"Just between us two, eh?" said the curate, kindling at the thought.
+
+"Just between us two," agreed Eileen. And the curate kissed her very
+solemnly. A secret is a comfortable thing to lovers, especially when
+they are young and about to be lonely.
+
+At this moment a leonine head, supported on a lumbering and ill-balanced
+body, was thrust in between them. It was Excalibur, taking sanctuary
+with the Church from the vengeance of the Law.
+
+"We might tell Scally, I think," said Eileen.
+
+"Rather!" assented the curate. "He introduced us."
+
+So Eileen communicated the great news to Excalibur.
+
+"You do approve, dear--don't you?" she said.
+
+Excalibur, instinctively realizing that this was an occasion when
+liberties might be taken, stood up on his hind legs and placed his
+forepaws on his mistress's shoulders. The curate supported them both.
+
+"And you will use your influence to get us a living wage from
+somewhere--won't you, old man?" added the curate.
+
+Excalibur tried to lick both their faces at once--and succeeded.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+SO the curate went away, but not to London. He was sent instead to a
+great manufacturing town in the north, where the work was equally hard,
+and where Anglican and Roman and Salvationist fought grimly side by side
+against the powers of drink and disease and crime. During these days,
+which ultimately rolled into years, the curate lost his boyish freshness
+and his unfortunate tendency to put on flesh. He grew thin and lathy;
+and, though his smile was as ready and as magnetic as ever, he seldom
+laughed.
+
+He never failed, however, to write a cheerful letter to Eileen every
+Monday morning. He was getting a hundred and twenty pounds a year now;
+so his chances of becoming a millionaire had increased by twenty per
+cent.
+
+Meantime his two confederates, Excalibur and Eileen, continued to reside
+at Much Moreham. Eileen was still the recognized beauty of the district,
+but she spread her net less promiscuously than of yore. Girl friends she
+always had in plenty, but it was noticed that she avoided intimacy with
+all eligible males of over twenty and under forty-five years of age. No
+one knew the reason for this except Excalibur. Eileen used to read
+Gerald's letters aloud to him every Tuesday morning; sometimes the
+letter contained a friendly message to Excalibur himself.
+
+In acknowledgment of this courtesy Excalibur always sent his love to
+the curate--Eileen wrote every Friday--and he and Eileen walked
+together, rain or shine, on Friday afternoons to post the letter in the
+next village. Much Moreham's post office was too small to remain
+oblivious to such a regular correspondence.
+
+The curate was seen no more in his old parish. Railroad journeys are
+costly things and curates' holidays rare. Besides, he had no overt
+excuse for coming. And so life went on for five years. The curate and
+Eileen may have met during that period, for Eileen sometimes went away
+visiting. As Excalibur was not privileged to accompany her on these
+occasions he had no means of checking her movements; but the chances are
+that she never saw the curate, or I think she would have told Excalibur
+about it. We simply have to tell some one.
+
+Then, quite suddenly, came a tremendous change in Excalibur's life.
+Eileen's brother-in-law--he was Excalibur's master no longer, for
+Excalibur had been transferred to Eileen by deed of gift, at her own
+request, on her first birthday after the curate's departure--fell ill.
+There was an operation and a crisis, and a deal of unhappiness at Much
+Moreham; then came convalescence, followed by directions for a sea
+voyage of six months. It was arranged that the house should be shut up
+and the children sent to their grandmother at Bath.
+
+"That settles everything and everybody," said the gaunt man on the
+sofa, "except you, Eileen? What about you?"
+
+"What about Scally?" inquired Eileen.
+
+Her brother-in-law apologetically admitted that he had forgotten Scally.
+
+"Not quite myself at present," he mentioned in extenuation.
+
+"I am going to Aunt Phoebe," announced Eileen.
+
+"You are never going to introduce Scally into Aunt Phoebe's
+establishment!" cried Eileen's sister.
+
+"No," said Eileen, "I am not." She rubbed Excalibur's matted head
+affectionately. "But I have arranged for the dear man's future. He is
+going to visit friends in the north. Aren't you, darling?"
+
+Excalibur, to whom this arrangement had been privately communicated
+some days before, wagged his tail and endeavored to look as intelligent
+and knowing as possible. He was not going to put his beloved mistress to
+shame by admitting to her relatives that he had not the faintest idea
+what she was talking about.
+
+However, he was soon to understand. The next day Eileen took him up to
+London by train. This in itself was a tremendous adventure, though
+alarming at first. He traveled in the guard's van, it having been found
+quite impossible to get him into an ordinary compartment--or, rather, to
+get any one else into the compartment after he lay down on the floor. So
+he traveled with the guard, chained to the vacuum brake, and shared that
+kindly official's dinner.
+
+When they reached the terminus there was much bustle and confusion. The
+door of the van was thrown open and porters dragged out the luggage and
+submitted samples thereof to overheated passengers, who invariably
+failed to recognize their own property and claimed someone else's.
+
+Finally, when the luggage was all cleared out, the guard took off
+Excalibur's chain and facetiously invited him to alight for London Town.
+Excalibur, lumbering delicately across the ribbed floor of the van,
+arrived at the open doorway. Outside on the platform he espied Eileen.
+Beside her stood a tall figure in black.
+
+With one tremendous roar of rapturous recognition, Excalibur leaped
+straight out of the van and launched himself fairly and squarely at the
+curate's chest. Luckily the curate saw him coming.
+
+"He knows you, all right," said Eileen with satisfaction.
+
+"He appears to," replied the curate. "Afraid I don't dance the tango,
+Scally, old man; but thanks for the invitation, all the same!"
+
+Excalibur spent the rest of the day in London, where it must be admitted
+he caused a genuine sensation--no mean feat in such a blasé place.
+
+In Bond Street the traffic had to be held up both ways by benevolent
+policemen, because Excalibur, feeling pleasantly tired, lay down to
+rest.
+
+When evening came they all dined together in a cheap little restaurant
+in Soho and were very gay, with the gayety of people who are whistling
+to keep their courage up. After dinner Eileen said good-bye, first to
+Excalibur and then to the curate. She was much more demonstrative toward
+the former than toward the latter, which is the way of women.
+
+Then the curate put Eileen into a taxi and, having with the aid of the
+commissionaire extracted Excalibur from underneath--he had gone there
+under some confused impression that it was the guard's van again--said
+good-bye for the last time; and Eileen, smiling bravely, was whirled
+away out of sight.
+
+As the taxi turned a distant corner and disappeared from view, it
+suddenly occurred to Excalibur that he had been left behind. Accordingly
+he set off in pursuit.
+
+The curate finally ran him to earth in Buckingham Palace Road, which is
+a long chase from Soho, where he was sitting on the pavement, to the
+grave inconvenience of the inhabitants of Pimlico, and refusing to be
+comforted. It took his new master the best part of an hour to get him to
+Euston Road, where it was discovered they had missed the night mail to
+the north. Accordingly they walked to a rival station and took another
+train.
+
+In all this Excalibur was the instrument of Destiny, as you shall hear.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+THE coroner's jury was inclined at the time to blame the signalman,
+but the Board of Trade inquiry established the fact that the accident
+was due to the engine-driver's neglect to keep a proper lookout.
+However, as the driver was dead and his fireman with him, the law very
+leniently took no further action in the matter.
+
+About three o'clock in the morning, as the train was crossing a bleak
+Yorkshire moor seven miles from Tetley Junction, the curate suddenly
+left the seat on which he lay stretched dreaming of Eileen and flew
+across the compartment on to the recumbent form of a stout commercial
+traveler. Then he rebounded to the floor and woke up--unhurt.
+
+"'Tis an accident, lad!" gasped the commercial traveler as he got his
+wind.
+
+"So it seems," said the curate. "Hold tight! She's rocking!"
+
+The commercial traveler, who was mechanically groping under the seat for
+his boots,--commercial travelers always remove their boots in
+third-class railroad compartments when on night journeys,--followed the
+curate's advice and braced himself with his feet against the opposite
+seat for the coming _bouleversement_.
+
+After the first shock the train had gathered way again--the light engine
+into which it had charged had been thrown clear off the track--but only
+for a moment. Suddenly the reeling engine of the express left the rails
+and staggered drunkenly along the ballast. A moment later it turned
+over, taking the guard's van and the first four coaches with it, and the
+whole train came to a standstill.
+
+It was a corridor train, and unfortunately for Gerald Gilmore and the
+commercial traveler their coach fell over corridor side downward. There
+was no door on the other side of the compartment--only three windows,
+crossed by a stout brass bar. These windows had suddenly become
+sky-lights.
+
+They fought their way out at last. Once he got the window open, the
+curate experienced little difficulty in getting through; but the
+commercial traveler was corpulent and tenacious of his boots, which he
+held persistently in one hand while Gerald tugged at the other. Still,
+he was hauled up at last, and the two slid down the perpendicular roof
+of the coach to the permanent way.
+
+"That's done, anyway!" panted the drummer; and sitting down he began to
+put on his boots.
+
+"There's plenty more to do," said the curate grimly, pulling off his
+coat. "The front of the train is on fire. Come!"
+
+He turned and ran. Almost at his first step he cannoned into a heavy
+body in rapid motion. It was Excalibur.
+
+"That you, old friend?" observed the curate. "I was on my way to see
+about you. Now that you are out, you may as well come and bear a hand."
+
+The pair sprinted along the line toward the blazing coaches.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was dawn--gray, weeping, and cheerless--on Tetley Moor. Another
+engine had come up from behind to take what was left of the train back
+to the Junction. Seven coaches, including the lordly sleeping saloon,
+stood intact; four, with the engine and tender, lay where they had
+fallen, a mass of charred wood and twisted metal.
+
+A motor car belonging to a doctor stood in the roadway a hundred yards
+off, and its owner, with a brother of the craft who had been a passenger
+on the train, was attending to the injured. There were fourteen of these
+altogether, mostly suffering from burns. These were made as comfortable
+as possible in sleeping berths their owners had vacated.
+
+"Take your seats, please!" said the surviving guard in a subdued voice.
+He spoke at the direction of a big man in a heavy overcoat, who appeared
+to have taken charge of the salvage operations. The passengers clambered
+up into the train.
+
+Only one hesitated. He was a long, lean young man, black from head to
+foot with soot and oil. His left arm was badly burned; and seeing a
+doctor disengaged at last, he came forward to have it dressed.
+
+The big man in the heavy overcoat approached him.
+
+"My name is Caversham," he said. "I happen to be a director of the
+company. If you will give me your name and address I will see to it
+that your services to-night are suitably recognized. The way you got
+those two children out of the first coach was splendid, if I may be
+allowed to say so. We did not even know they were there."
+
+The young man's teeth suddenly flashed out into a white smile against
+the blackness of his face.
+
+"Neither did I, sir," he said. "Let me introduce you to the responsible
+party."
+
+He whistled. Out of the gray dawn loomed an eerie monster, badly singed,
+wagging its tail.
+
+"Scally, old man," said the curate, "this gentleman wants to present you
+with an illuminated address. Thank him prettily!" Then, to the doctor:
+"I'm ever so much obliged to you; it's quite comfortable now."
+
+He began stiffly to pull on his coat and waistcoat. Lord Caversham,
+lending a hand, noted the waistcoat and said quickly:--
+
+"Will you travel in my compartment? I should like to have a word with
+you if I may."
+
+"I think I had better go and have a look at those poor folks in the
+sleeper first," replied the curate. "They may require my services
+professionally."
+
+"At the Junction, then, perhaps?" suggested Lord Caversham.
+
+At the Junction, however, the curate found a special waiting to proceed
+north by a loop line; and, being in no mind to receive compliments or
+waste his substance on a hotel, he departed forthwith, taking his
+charred confederate, Excalibur, with him.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+Fortune, once she takes a fancy to you, is not readily shaken off,
+however, as most successful men are always trying to forget. A fortnight
+later Lord Caversham, leaving his hotel in a great northern town,
+encountered an acquaintance he had no difficulty whatever in
+recognizing.
+
+It was Excalibur, jammed fast between two stationary tramcars--he had
+not yet shaken down to town life--submitting to a painful but effective
+process of extraction at the hands of a posse of policemen and tram
+conductors, shrilly directed by a small but commanding girl of the
+lodging-house-drudge variety.
+
+When this enterprise had been brought to a successful conclusion and
+the congested traffic moved on by the overheated policemen, Lord
+Caversham crossed the street and tapped the damsel on the shoulder.
+
+"Can you kindly inform me where the owner of that dog may be found?" he
+inquired politely.
+
+"Yas. Se'nty-one Pilgrim Street. But 'e won't sell him."
+
+"Should I be likely to find him at home if I called now?"
+
+"Yas. Bin in bed since the accident. Got a nasty arm."
+
+"Perhaps you would not mind accompanying me back to Pilgrim Street in my
+car?"
+
+After that Mary Ellen's mind became an incoherent blur. A stately
+limousine glided up; Mary Ellen was handed in by a footman and
+Excalibur was stuffed in after her in installments. The grand gentleman
+entered by the opposite door and sat down beside her; but Mary Ellen was
+much too dazed to converse with him.
+
+The arrival of the equipage in Pilgrim Street was the greatest moment of
+Mary Ellen's life.
+
+Meantime upstairs in the first-floor front the curate, lying in his
+uncomfortable flock bed, was saying:--
+
+"If you really mean it, sir--"
+
+"I do mean it. If those two children had been burned to death unnoticed
+I should never have forgiven myself, and the public would never have
+forgiven the company."
+
+"Well, sir, since you say that, you--well, you could do me a service.
+Could you possibly use your influence to get me a billet--I'm not
+asking for an incumbency; any old curacy would do--a billet I could
+marry on?" He flushed scarlet. "I--we have been waiting a long time
+now."
+
+There was a long silence, and the curate wondered whether he had been
+too mercenary in his request. Then Lord Caversham asked:--
+
+"What are you getting at present?"
+
+"A hundred and twenty a year."
+
+This was about two thirds of the salary Lord Caversham paid his
+chauffeur. He asked another question in his curious, abrupt staccato
+manner:--
+
+"How much do you want?"
+
+"We could make both ends meet on two hundred; but another fifty would
+enable me to make her a lot more comfortable," said the curate
+wistfully.
+
+The great man surveyed him silently--wonderingly, too, if the curate had
+known. Presently he asked:
+
+"Afraid of hard work?"
+
+"No work is hard to a man with a wife and a home of his own," replied
+the curate with simple fervor.
+
+Lord Caversham smiled grimly. He had more homes of his own than he could
+conveniently live in, and he had been married three times; but even he
+found work hard now and then.
+
+"I wonder!" he said. "Well, good-afternoon. I should like to be
+introduced to your fiancée some day."
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+A TRAMP opened the rectory gate and shambled up the neat gravel walk
+toward the house. Taking a short cut through the shrubbery he emerged
+suddenly on a little lawn.
+
+On the lawn a lady was sitting in a basket chair beside a perambulator,
+the occupant of which was slumbering peacefully. A small but intensely
+capable nursemaid, prone on the grass in a curvilinear attitude, was
+acting as tunnel to a young gentleman of three who was impersonating a
+locomotive.
+
+The tramp approached the group and asked huskily for alms. He was a
+burly and unpleasant specimen of his class--a class all too numerous on
+the outskirts of the great industrial parish of Smeltingborough. The
+lady in the basket chair looked up.
+
+"The rector is out," she said. "If you go into the town you will find
+him at the Church Hall and he will investigate your case."
+
+"Oh, the rector is out, is he?" repeated the tramp in tones of distinct
+satisfaction.
+
+"Yes," said Eileen.
+
+The tramp advanced another pace.
+
+"Give us half a crown!" he said. "I haven't had a bite of food since
+yesterday, lady--nor a drink neither," he added humorously.
+
+"Please go away!" said the lady. "You know where to find the rector."
+
+The tramp smiled unpleasantly, but made no attempt to move.
+
+"You refuse to go away?" the lady said.
+
+"I'll go for half a crown," replied the tramp with the gracious air of
+one anxious to oblige a lady.
+
+"Watch baby for a moment, Mary Ellen," said Eileen.
+
+She rose and disappeared into the house, followed by the gratified smile
+of the tramp. He was a reasonable man and knew that ladies did not wear
+pockets.
+
+"Thirsty weather," he remarked affably.
+
+Mary Ellen, keeping one hand on the shoulder of Master Gerald Caversham
+Gilmore and the other on the edge of the baby's perambulator, merely
+chuckled sardonically.
+
+The next moment there were footsteps round the corner of the house and
+Eileen reappeared. She was clinging with both hands to the collar of an
+enormous dog. Its tongue lolled from its great jaws; its tail waved
+menacingly from side to side; its great limbs were bent as though for a
+spring. Its eyes were half closed as though to focus the exact distance.
+
+"Run!" cried Eileen to the tramp. "I can't hold him in much longer!"
+
+This was true enough, except that when Eileen said "in" she meant "up."
+But the tramp did not linger to discuss grammar. There was a scurry of
+feet, the gate banged and he was gone.
+
+With a sigh of relief Eileen let go of Excalibur's collar. Excalibur
+promptly collapsed on the grass and went to sleep again.
+
+
+
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+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Scally, by Ian Hay</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: Scally</p>
+<p>       The Story of a Perfect Gentleman</p>
+<p>Author: Ian Hay</p>
+<p>Release Date: April 4, 2009  [eBook #28495]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SCALLY***</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Emmy,<br />
+    and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br />
+    (http://www.pgdp.net)</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 299px;">
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="299" height="500" alt="Cover" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<div class='bbox'>
+<h3>By Ian Hay</h3>
+
+
+<div class='center'>&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</div>
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Books by Hay">
+<tr><td align='left'><div class="hang1">SCALLY: THE STORY OF A PERFECT GENTLEMAN. With Frontispiece.</div></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class="hang1">A KNIGHT ON WHEELS.</div></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class="hang1">HAPPY-GO-LUCKY. Illustrated by Charles E. Brock.</div></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class="hang1">A SAFETY MATCH. With frontispiece.</div></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class="hang1">A MAN'S MAN. With frontispiece.</div></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class="hang1">THE RIGHT STUFF. With frontispiece.</div></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<div class='copyright'><br />
+HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY<br />
+<span class="smcap">Boston and New York</span><br />
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 360px;">
+<img src="images/frontis.jpg" width="360" height="500" alt="THE LEADING OBJECT PROVED TO BE A SMALL, WET, SHIVERING, WHIMPERING PUPPY" title="" />
+<span class="caption">THE LEADING OBJECT PROVED TO BE A SMALL, WET, SHIVERING, WHIMPERING PUPPY</span>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h1>SCALLY</h1>
+
+<h2>THE STORY OF A PERFECT<br />
+GENTLEMAN</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">By IAN HAY</span><br /><br /><br /></h3>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 72px;">
+<img src="images/emblem.jpg" width="72" height="100" alt="Emblem" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<div class='center'><br /><br /><br />
+<small>BOSTON AND NEW YORK</small><br />
+HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY<br />
+<small>MDCCCCXV</small><br />
+</div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div class='copyright'>
+COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY<br />
+COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY IAN HAY BEITH<br />
+<br />
+ALL RIGHTS RESERVED<br />
+<br />
+<i>Published November 1915</i><br />
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>SCALLY</h2>
+
+<h3>THE STORY OF A PERFECT
+GENTLEMAN</h3>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>I</h2>
+
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">Bettersea</span> trem? Right, miss!"
+My wife, who has been married long
+enough to feel deeply gratified at
+being mistaken for a maiden lady,
+smiled seraphically at the conductor,
+and allowed herself to be hoisted up
+the steps of the majestic vehicle provided
+by a paternal county council to
+convey passengers&mdash;at a loss to the
+ratepayers, I understand&mdash;from the
+Embankment to Battersea.</p>
+
+<p>Presently we ground our way
+round a curve and began to cross
+Westminster Bridge. The conductor,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span>
+whose innate cockney bonhomie his
+high official position had failed to
+eradicate, presented himself before us
+and collected our fares.</p>
+
+<p>"What part of Bettersea did you
+require, sir?" he asked of me.</p>
+
+<p>I coughed and answered evasively:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, about the middle."</p>
+
+<p>"We haven't been there before,"
+added my wife, quite gratuitously.</p>
+
+<p>The conductor smiled indulgently
+and punched our tickets.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll tell you when to get down,"
+he said, and left us.</p>
+
+<p>For some months we had been considering
+the question of buying a dog,
+and a good deal of our spare time&mdash;or
+perhaps I should say of my spare
+time, for a woman's time is naturally
+all her own&mdash;had been pleasantly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span>
+occupied in discussing the matter.
+Having at length committed ourselves
+to the purchase of the animal,
+we proceeded to consider such details
+as breed, sex, and age.</p>
+
+<p>My wife vacillated between a
+bloodhound, because bloodhounds
+are so aristocratic in appearance, and
+a Pekinese, because they are <i>dernier
+cri</i>. We like to be <i>dernier cri</i> even in
+Much Moreham. Her younger sister,
+Eileen, who spends a good deal of
+time with us, having no parents of her
+own, suggested an Old English sheep
+dog, explaining that it would be company
+for my wife when I was away
+from home. I coldly recommended a
+mastiff.</p>
+
+<p>Our son John, aged three, on being
+consulted, expressed a preference for
+twelve tigers in a box, and was not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span>
+again invited to participate in the
+debate.</p>
+
+<p>Finally we decided on an Aberdeen
+terrier, of an age and sex to be settled
+by circumstances, and I was instructed
+to communicate with a gentleman
+in the North who advertised
+in our morning paper that Aberdeen
+terriers were his specialty. In due
+course we received a reply. The advertiser
+recommended two animals&mdash;namely,
+Celtic Chief, aged four
+months, and Scotia's Pride, aged one
+year. Pedigrees were inclosed, each
+about as complicated as the family
+tree of the House of Hapsburg; and
+the favor of an early reply was requested,
+as both dogs were being
+hotly bid for by an anonymous client
+in Constantinople.</p>
+
+<p>The price of Celtic Chief was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span>
+twenty guineas; that of Scotia's
+Pride, for reasons heavily underlined
+in the pedigree, was twenty-seven.
+The advertiser, who resided in Aberdeen,
+added that these prices did not
+cover cost of carriage. We decided
+not to stand in the way of the gentleman
+in Constantinople, and having
+sent back the pedigrees by return of
+post, resumed the debate.</p>
+
+<p>Finally Stella, my wife, said:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"We don't really want a dog with
+a pedigree. We only want something
+that will bark at beggars and be gentle
+with baby. Why not go to the
+Home for Lost Dogs at Battersea? I
+believe you can get any dog you like
+there for five shillings. We will run
+up to town next Wednesday and see
+about it&mdash;and I might get some
+clothes as well."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Hence our presence on the tram.</p>
+
+<p>Presently the conductor, who had
+kindly pointed out to us such objects
+of local interest as the River
+Thames and the Houses of Parliament,
+stopped the tram in a crowded
+thoroughfare and announced that
+we were in Battersea.</p>
+
+<p>"Alight here," he announced facetiously,
+"for 'Ome for Lost Dawgs!"</p>
+
+<p>Guiltily realizing that there is many
+a true word spoken in jest, we obeyed
+him, and the tram went rocking and
+whizzing out of sight. We had
+eschewed a cab.</p>
+
+<p>"When you are only going to pay
+five shillings for a dog," my wife had
+pointed out, with convincing logic,
+"it is silly to go and pay perhaps another
+five shillings for a cab. It
+doubles the price of the dog at once.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span>
+If we had been buying an expensive
+dog we might have taken a cab; but
+not for a five-shilling one."</p>
+
+<p>"Now," I inquired briskly, "how
+are we going to find this place?"</p>
+
+<p>"Haven't you any idea where it
+is?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. I have a sort of vague notion
+that it is on an island in the middle
+of the river, called the Isle of Dogs,
+or Barking Reach, or something like
+that. However, I have no doubt&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Hadn't we better ask some one?"
+suggested Stella.</p>
+
+<p>I demurred.</p>
+
+<p>"If there is one thing I dislike," I
+said, "it is accosting total strangers
+and badgering them for information
+they don't possess&mdash;not that that
+will prevent them from giving it. If
+we start asking the way we shall find<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span>
+ourselves in Putney or Woolwich in
+no time!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, dear," said Stella soothingly.</p>
+
+<p>"Now I suggest&mdash;" My hand
+went to my pocket.</p>
+
+<p>"No, darling," interposed my wife,
+hastily; "not a map, please!" It is a
+curious psychological fact that women
+have a constitutional aversion to
+maps and railroad time-tables. They
+would rather consult a half-witted
+errand boy or a deaf railroad porter.
+"Do not let us make a spectacle of
+ourselves in the public streets again!
+I have not yet forgotten the day when
+you tried to find the Crystal Palace.
+Besides, it will only blow away. Ask
+that dear little boy there. He is looking
+at us so wistfully."</p>
+
+<p>Yes; I admit it was criminal folly.
+A man who asks a London street boy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span>
+to be so kind as to direct him to a
+Home for Lost Dogs has only himself
+to thank for the consequence.</p>
+
+<p>The wistful little boy smiled up at
+us. He had a pinched face and large
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Lost Dogs' 'Ome, sir?" he said
+courteously. "It's a good long way.
+Do you want to get there quick?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Then if I was you, sir," replied
+the infant, edging to the mouth of an
+alleyway, "I should bite a policeman!"
+And, with an ear-splitting
+yell, he vanished.</p>
+
+<p>We walked on, hot-faced.</p>
+
+<p>"Little wretch!" said Stella.</p>
+
+<p>"We simply asked for it," I rejoined.
+"What are we going to do
+next?"</p>
+
+<p>My question was answered in a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span>
+most incredible fashion, for at this
+moment a man emerged from a shop
+on our right and set off down the
+street before us. He wore a species of
+uniform; and emblazoned on the
+front of his hat was the information
+that he was an official of the Battersea
+Home for Lost and Starving
+Dogs.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait a minute and I will ask
+him," I said, starting forward.</p>
+
+<p>But my wife would not hear of it.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly not," she replied. "If
+we ask him he will simply offer to
+show us the way. Then we shall have
+to talk to him&mdash;about hydrophobia,
+and lethal chambers, and distemper&mdash;and
+it may be for miles. I simply
+couldn't bear it! We shall have to
+tip him, too. Let us follow him
+quietly."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>To those who have never attempted
+to track a fellow creature surreptitiously
+through the streets of
+London on a hot day, the feat may
+appear simple. It is in reality a most
+exhausting, dilatory, and humiliating
+exercise. Our difficulty lay not so
+much in keeping our friend in sight
+as in avoiding frequent and unexpected
+collisions with him. The
+general idea, as they say on field
+days, was to keep about twenty
+yards behind him; but under certain
+circumstances distance has an uncanny
+habit of annihilating itself.
+The man himself was no hustler.
+Once or twice he stopped to light
+his pipe or converse with a friend.</p>
+
+<p>During these interludes Stella and
+I loafed guiltily on the pavement,
+pointing out to one another objects<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span>
+of local interest with the fatuous
+officiousness of people in the foreground
+of hotel advertisements. Occasionally
+he paused to contemplate
+the contents of a shop window. We
+gazed industriously into the window
+next door. Our first window, I recollect,
+was an undertaker's, with ready-printed
+expressions of grief for sale
+on white porcelain disks. We had
+time to read them all. The next was
+a butcher's. Here we stayed, perforce,
+so long that the proprietor,
+who was of the tribe that disposes of
+its wares almost entirely by personal
+canvass, came out into the street
+and endeavored to sell us a bullock's
+heart.</p>
+
+<p>Our quarry's next proceeding was
+to dive into a public house. We
+turned and surveyed one another.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"What are we to do now?" inquired
+my wife.</p>
+
+<p>"Go inside, too," I replied with
+more enthusiasm than I had hitherto
+displayed. "At least, I think I ought
+to. You can please yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"I will not be left in the street,"
+said Stella firmly. "We must just
+wait here together until he comes out."</p>
+
+<p>"There may be another exit," I
+objected. "We had better go in. I
+shall take something, just to keep up
+appearances; and you must sit down
+in the ladies' bar, or the snug, or
+whatever they call it."</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly not!" said Stella.</p>
+
+<p>We had arrived at this <i>impasse</i>
+when the man suddenly reappeared,
+wiping his mouth. Instantly and silently
+we fell in behind him.</p>
+
+<p>For the first time the man appeared<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span>
+to notice our presence. He
+regarded us curiously, with a faint
+gleam of recognition in his eyes, and
+then set off down the street at a good
+pace. We followed, panting. Once or
+twice he looked back over his shoulder
+a little apprehensively, I thought.
+But we ploughed on.</p>
+
+<p>"We ought to get there soon at
+this pace," I gasped. "Hello! He's
+gone again!"</p>
+
+<p>"He turned down to the right,"
+said Stella excitedly.</p>
+
+<p>The lust of the chase was fairly on
+us now. We swung eagerly round
+the corner into a quiet by-street.
+Our man was nowhere to be seen and
+the street was almost empty.</p>
+
+<p>"Come on!" said Stella. "He may
+have turned in somewhere."</p>
+
+<p>We hurried down the street. Suddenly,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span>
+warned by a newly awakened
+and primitive instinct, I looked back.
+We had overrun our quarry. He had
+just emerged from some hiding place
+and was heading back toward the
+main street, looking fearfully over his
+shoulder. Once more we were in full
+cry.</p>
+
+<p>For the next five minutes we practically
+ran&mdash;all three of us. The
+man was obviously frightened out of
+his wits, and kept making frenzied
+and spasmodic spurts, from which we
+surmised that he was getting to the
+end of his powers of endurance.</p>
+
+<p>"If only we could overtake him,"
+I said, hauling my exhausted spouse
+along by the arm, "we could explain
+that&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"He's gone again!" exclaimed
+Stella.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She was right. The man had turned
+another corner. We followed him
+round hotfoot, and found ourselves
+in a prim little <i>cul-de-sac</i>, with villas
+on each side. Across the end of the
+street ran a high wall, obviously
+screening a railroad track.</p>
+
+<p>"We've got him!" I exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>I felt as Moltke must have felt
+when he closed the circle at Sedan.</p>
+
+<p>"But where is the Dogs' Home,
+dear?" inquired Stella.</p>
+
+<p>The question was never answered,
+for at this moment the man ran up
+the steps of the fourth villa on the
+left and slipped a latchkey into the
+lock. The door closed behind him
+with a venomous snap and we were
+left alone in the street, guideless and
+dogless.</p>
+
+<p>A minute later the man appeared<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span>
+at the ground-floor window, accompanied
+by a female of commanding
+appearance. He pointed us out to
+her. Behind them we could dimly
+descry a white tablecloth, a tea cozy
+and covered dishes.</p>
+
+<p>The commanding female, after a
+prolonged and withering glare,
+plucked a hairpin from her head and
+ostentatiously proceeded to skewer
+together the starchy white curtains
+that framed the window. Privacy
+secured and the sanctity of the English
+home thus pointedly vindicated,
+she and her husband disappeared
+into the murky background, where
+they doubtless sat down to an excellent
+high tea. Exhausted and discomfited,
+we drifted away.</p>
+
+<p>"I am going home," said Stella in
+a hollow voice. "And I think," she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span>
+added bitterly, "that it might have
+occurred to you to suggest that the
+creature might possibly be going
+from the Dogs' Home and not to it."</p>
+
+<p>I apologized. It is the simplest
+plan, really.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="II" id="II"></a>II</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">It</span> was almost dark when the train
+arrived at our little country station.
+We set out to walk home by the short
+cut across the golf course.</p>
+
+<p>"Anyhow, we have saved five shillings,"
+remarked Stella.</p>
+
+<p>"We paid half a crown for that taxi
+which took us back to Victoria Station,"
+I reminded her.</p>
+
+<p>"Do not argue to-night, darling,"
+responded my wife. "I simply cannot
+endure anything more."</p>
+
+<p>Plainly she was a little unstrung.
+Very considerately, I selected another
+topic.</p>
+
+<p>"I think our best plan," I said
+cheerfully, "would be to advertise
+for a dog."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I never wish to see a dog again,"
+replied Stella.</p>
+
+<p>I surveyed her with some concern
+and said gently:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I am afraid you are tired, dear."</p>
+
+<p>"No; I'm not."</p>
+
+<p>"A little shaken, perhaps?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing of the kind. Joe, what
+is that?"</p>
+
+<p>Stella's fingers bit deep into my
+biceps muscle, causing me considerable
+pain. We were passing a small
+sheet of water which guards the thirteenth
+green on the golf course. It is
+a stagnant and unclean pool, but we
+make rather a fuss of it. We call it
+the pond; and if you play a ball into
+it you send a blasphemous caddie in
+after it and count one stroke.</p>
+
+<p>A young moon was struggling up
+over the trees, dismally illuminating<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span>
+the scene. On the slimy shores of the
+pond we beheld a small moving object.</p>
+
+<p>A yard behind it was another object,
+a little smaller, moving at exactly
+the same pace. One of the objects
+was emitting sounds of distress.</p>
+
+<p>Abandoning my quaking consort
+I advanced to the edge of the pond
+and leaned down to investigate the
+mystery.</p>
+
+<p>The leading object proved to be
+a small, wet, shivering, whimpering
+puppy. The satellite was a brick.
+The two were connected by a string.
+The puppy had just emerged from
+the depths of the pond, towing the
+brick behind it.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it, dear?" repeated Stella
+fearfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Your dog!" I replied, and cut the
+string.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="III" id="III"></a>III</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">We</span> spent three days deciding on a
+name for him. Stella suggested Tiny,
+on account of his size. I pointed out
+that time might stultify this selection
+of a title.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think so," said Eileen,
+supporting her sister. "That kind of
+dog does not grow very big."</p>
+
+<p>"What kind of dog is he?" I inquired
+swiftly.</p>
+
+<p>Eileen said no more. There are
+problems that even girls of twenty
+cannot solve.</p>
+
+<p>A warm bath had revealed to us
+the fact that the puppy was of a
+dingy yellow hue. I suggested that
+we should call him Mustard. Our
+son John, on being consulted&mdash;against<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span>
+my advice&mdash;by his mother,
+addressed the animal as Pussy. Stella
+continued to favor Tiny. Finally
+Eileen, who was at the romantic age,
+produced a copy of Tennyson and
+suggested Excalibur, alleging in support
+of her preposterous proposition
+that</p>
+
+<div class='center'>It rose from out the bosom of the lake.<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>"The darling rose from out the
+bosom of the lake, too, just like the
+sword Excalibur," she said; "so I
+think it would make a lovely name
+for him."</p>
+
+<p>"The little brute waded out of a
+muddy pond towing a brick," I replied.
+"I see no parallel. He was not
+the product of the pond. Some one
+must have thrown him in, and he
+came out."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"That is just what some one must
+have done with the sword," retorted
+Eileen. "So we'll call you Excalibur,
+won't we, darling little Scally?"</p>
+
+<p>She embraced the puppy warmly
+and the unsuspecting animal replied
+by frantically licking her face.</p>
+
+<p>However, the name stuck, with
+variations. When the puppy was big
+enough he was presented with a collar,
+engraved with the name Excalibur,
+together with my name and
+address. Among ourselves we usually
+addressed him as Scally. The children
+in the village called him the
+Scalawag.</p>
+
+<p>His time during his first year in our
+household was fully occupied in growing
+up. Stella declared that if one
+could have persuaded him to stand
+still for five minutes it would have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span>
+been actually possible to see him
+grow. He grew at the rate of about
+an inch a week for the best part of a
+year. When he had finished he looked
+like nothing on earth. At one time
+we cherished a brief but illusory hope
+that he was going to turn into some
+sort of an imitation of a St. Bernard;
+but the symptoms rapidly passed off,
+and his final and permanent aspect
+was that of a rather badly stuffed
+lion.</p>
+
+<p>Like most overgrown creatures he
+was top-heavy and lethargic and
+very humble-minded. Still, there
+was a kind of respectful pertinacity
+about him. It requires some strength
+of character, for instance, to wade
+along the bottom of a pond to dry
+land, accompanied by a brick as big
+as yourself. It was quite impossible,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span>
+too, short of locking him up, to prevent
+him from accompanying us
+when we took our walks abroad, if
+he had made up his mind to do so.</p>
+
+<p>The first time this happened I was
+going to shoot with my neighbors,
+the Hoods. It was only a mile to the
+first covert and I set off after breakfast
+to walk. I was hardly out on the
+road when Excalibur was beside me,
+ambling uncertainly on his weedy
+legs and smiling up into my face with
+an air of imbecile affection.</p>
+
+<p>"You have many qualities, old
+friend," I said, "but I don't think
+you are a sporting dog. Go home!"</p>
+
+<p>Excalibur sat down on the road
+with a dejected air. Then, having
+given me fifty yards start, he rose
+and crawled sheepishly after me. I
+stopped, called him up, pointed him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span>
+with some difficulty in the required
+direction, gave him a resounding
+spank and bade him begone. He
+responded by collapsing like a camp
+bedstead, and I left him.</p>
+
+<p>Two minutes later I looked round.
+Excalibur was ten yards behind me,
+propelling himself along on his stomach.
+This time I thrashed him severely.
+After he began to howl I let
+him go, and he lumbered away homeward,
+the picture of misery.</p>
+
+<p>In due course I reached the crossroads
+where I had arranged to meet
+the rest of the party. They had not
+arrived, but Excalibur had. He had
+made a d&eacute;tour and headed me off.
+Not certain which route I would take
+after reaching the crossroads, he was
+sitting very sensibly under the signpost,
+awaiting my arrival. On seeing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span>
+me he immediately came forward,
+wagging his tail, and placed himself
+at my feet in the position most convenient
+to me for inflicting chastisement.</p>
+
+<p>I wonder how many of our human
+friends would be willing to pay such a
+price for the pleasure of our company.</p>
+
+<p>As time went on Excalibur filled
+out into one of the most terrifying
+spectacles I have ever beheld. In
+one respect, though, he lived up to
+his knightly name. His manners were
+of the most courtly description and
+he had an affectionate greeting for
+all, beggars included. He was particularly
+fond of children. If he saw
+children in the distance he would
+canter up and offer to play with them.
+If the children had not met him before
+they would run shrieking to their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span>
+nurses. If they had they would fall
+on Excalibur in a body and roll him
+over and pull him about.</p>
+
+<p>On wet afternoons, in the nursery,
+my own family used to play at dentist
+with him, assigning to Excalibur
+the r&ocirc;le of patient. Gas was administered
+with a bicycle pump, and a
+shoehorn and buttonhook were employed
+in place of the ordinary instruments
+of torture; but Excalibur did
+not mind. He lay on his back on the
+hearth rug, with the principal dentist
+sitting astride his ribs, as happy as a
+king.</p>
+
+<p>He was particularly attracted by
+babies; and being able by reason of
+his stature to look right down into
+perambulators, he was accustomed
+whenever he met one of those vehicles
+to amble alongside and peer<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span>
+inquiringly into the face of its occupant.
+Most of the babies in the district
+got to know him in time, but
+until they did we had a good deal of
+correspondence to attend to on the
+subject.</p>
+
+<p>Excalibur's intellect may have
+been lofty, but his memory was
+treacherous. Our household will never
+forget the day on which he was
+given the shoulder of mutton.</p>
+
+<p>One morning after breakfast Eileen,
+accompanied by Excalibur, intercepted
+the kitchen maid hastening
+in the direction of the potting shed,
+carrying the joint in question at
+arm's length. The damsel explained
+that its premature maturity was due
+to the recent warm weather and that
+she was even now in search of the
+gardener's boy, who would be commissioned<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span>
+to perform the duties of
+sexton.</p>
+
+<p>"It seems a waste, miss," observed
+the kitchen maid; "but cook says it
+can't be ate nohow now."</p>
+
+<p>Loud but respectful snuffings from
+Excalibur moved a direct negative to
+this statement. Eileen and the kitchen
+maid, who were both criminally
+weak where Excalibur was concerned,
+saw a way to gratify their economical
+instincts and their natural affection
+simultaneously. The next moment
+Excalibur was lurching contentedly
+down the gravel path with a presentation
+shoulder of mutton in his
+mouth.</p>
+
+<p>Then Joy Day began. Excalibur
+took his prize into the middle of the
+tennis lawn. It was a very large
+shoulder of mutton, but Excalibur<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span>
+finished it in ten minutes. After that,
+distended to his utmost limits, he
+went to sleep in the sun, with the
+bone between his paws. Occasionally
+he woke up and, raising his head,
+stared solemnly into space, in the
+attitude of a Trafalgar Square lion.</p>
+
+<p>The bone now lay white and gleaming
+on the grass beside him. Then he
+fell asleep again. About four o'clock
+he roused himself and began to look
+for a suitable place of interment for
+the bone. By four-thirty the deed
+was done and he went to sleep once
+more. At five he woke up and pandemonium began.
+He could not remember
+where he had buried the bone!</p>
+
+<p>He started systematically with the
+rose beds, but met with no success.
+After that he tried two or three
+shrubberies without avail, and then<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span>
+embarked on a frantic but thorough
+excavation of the tennis lawn. We
+were taking tea on the lawn at the
+time, and our attention was first
+drawn to Excalibur's bereavement by
+a temporary but unshakable conviction
+on his part that the bone was
+buried immediately underneath the
+tea table.</p>
+
+<p>As the tennis lawn was fast beginning
+to resemble a golf course we
+locked Excalibur up in the washhouse,
+where his hyena-like howls
+rent the air for the rest of the evening,
+penetrating even to the dining-room.
+This was particularly unfortunate,
+because we were having a dinner
+party in honor of a neighbor who
+had recently come to the district, no
+less a personage, in fact, than the
+new lord-lieutenant of the county and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span>
+his lady. Stella was naturally anxious
+that there should be no embarrassments
+on such an occasion, and
+it distressed her to think that these
+people should imagine that we kept
+a private torture chamber on the
+premises.</p>
+
+<p>However, dinner passed off quite
+successfully and we adjourned to the
+drawing-room. It was a chilly September
+evening and Lady Wickham
+was accommodated with a seat by
+the fire in a large armchair, with a
+cushion at her back. When the gentlemen
+came in Eileen sang to us.
+Fortunately the drawing-room is out
+of range of the washhouse.</p>
+
+<p>During Eileen's first song I sat by
+Lady Wickham. Her expression was
+one of patrician calm and well-bred
+repose, but it seemed to me she was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span>
+not looking quite comfortable. I
+was not feeling quite comfortable
+myself. The atmosphere seemed a
+trifle oppressive: perhaps we had
+done wrong in having a fire after all.
+Lady Wickham appeared to notice
+it too. She sat very upright, fanning
+herself mechanically, and seemed disinclined
+to lean back in her chair.</p>
+
+<p>After the song was finished I said:</p>
+
+<p>"I am afraid you are not quite
+comfortable, Lady Wickham. Let
+me get you a larger cushion."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," said Lady Wickham,
+"the cushion I have is delightfully
+comfortable; but I think there
+is something hard behind it."</p>
+
+<p>Apologetically I plucked away the
+cushion. Lady Wickham was right;
+there was something behind it.</p>
+
+<p>It was Excalibur's bone!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="IV" id="IV"></a>IV</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">A walk</span> along the village street was
+always a great event for Excalibur.
+Still, it must have contained many
+humiliating moments for one of his
+sensitive disposition; for he was always
+pathetically anxious to make
+friends with other dogs, but was
+rarely successful. Little dogs merely
+bit his legs and big dogs cut him dead.</p>
+
+<p>I think this was why he usually
+commenced his morning round by
+calling on a rabbit. The rabbit lived
+in a hutch in a yard at the end of
+a passage between two cottages, the
+first turning on the right after you
+entered the village, and Excalibur always
+dived down this at the earliest
+opportunity. It was no use for Eileen,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span>
+who usually took him out on
+these occasions, to endeavor to hold
+him back. Either Excalibur called
+on the rabbit by himself or Eileen
+went with him; there was no other
+alternative.</p>
+
+<p>Arrived at the hutch, Excalibur
+wagged his tail and contemplated
+the rabbit with his usual air of vacuous
+benevolence. The rabbit made
+not the faintest response, but continued
+to munch green feed, twitching
+its nose in a superior manner.
+Finally, when it could endure Excalibur's
+admiring inspection and
+hard breathing no longer, it turned
+its back and retired into its bedroom.</p>
+
+<p>Excalibur's next call was usually at
+the butcher's shop, where he was
+presented with a specially selected
+and quite unsalable fragment of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span>
+meat. He then crossed the road to
+the baker's, where he purchased a
+halfpenny bun, for which his escort
+was expected to pay. After that he
+walked from shop to shop, wherever
+he was taken, with great docility and
+enjoyment; for he was a gregarious
+animal and had a friend behind or
+underneath almost every counter in
+the village. Men, women, babies,
+kittens, even ducks&mdash;they were all
+one to him.</p>
+
+<p>At one time Eileen had endeavored
+to teach him a few simple accomplishments,
+such as begging for food,
+dying for his country, and carrying
+parcels. She was unsuccessful in all
+three instances. Excalibur on his
+hind legs stood about five feet six,
+and when he fell from that eminence,
+as he invariably did when he tried to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span>
+beg, he usually broke something. He
+was hampered, too, by inability to
+distinguish one order from another.
+More than once he narrowly escaped
+with his life through mistaking
+an urgent appeal to come to heel out
+of the way of an approaching automobile
+for a command to die for his
+country in the middle of the road.</p>
+
+<p>As for educating him to carry parcels,
+a single attempt was sufficient.
+The parcel in question contained a
+miscellaneous assortment of articles
+from the grocer's, including lard, soap,
+and safety matches. It was securely
+tied up, and the grocer kindly attached
+it by a short length of string
+to a wooden clothespin, in order to
+make it easier for Excalibur to carry.
+They set off home.</p>
+
+<p>Excalibur was most apologetic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span>
+about it afterward, besides being extremely
+unwell; but he had no idea,
+he explained to Eileen, that anything
+put into his mouth was not meant
+to be eaten. He then tendered the
+clothespin and some mangled brown
+paper, with an air of profound abasement.
+After that no further attempts
+at compulsory education were undertaken.</p>
+
+<p>It was his daily walk with Eileen,
+however, which introduced Excalibur
+to life&mdash;life in its broadest and most
+romantic sense. As I was not privileged
+to be present at the opening
+incident of this episode, or at most
+of its subsequent developments, the
+direct conduct of this narrative here
+passes out of my hands.</p>
+
+<p>One sunny morning in July a young
+man in clerical attire sat breakfasting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span>
+in his rooms at Mrs. Tice's. Mrs.
+Tice's establishment was situated on
+the village street and Mrs. Tice was
+in the habit of letting her ground
+floor to lodgers of impeccable respectability.</p>
+
+<p>It was half-past eleven, which is a
+late hour for the clergy to breakfast;
+but this young man appeared to be
+suffering from no qualms of conscience
+on the subject. He was making
+an excellent breakfast and reading
+the Henley results with a mixture
+of rapture and longing.</p>
+
+<p>He had just removed the "Sportsman"
+from the convenient buttress of
+the teapot and substituted "Punch"
+when he became aware that day had
+turned to night. Looking up he perceived
+that his open window, which
+was rather small and of the casement<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span>
+variety, was completely blocked by
+a huge, shapeless, and opaque mass.
+Next moment the mass resolved itself
+into an animal of enormous size
+and surprising appearance, which
+fell heavily into the room, and</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+Like a stream that, spouting from a cliff,<br />
+Fails in mid-air, but, gathering at the base,<br />
+Remakes itself,<br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>rose to its feet and, advancing to the
+table, laid a heavy head on the white
+cloth and lovingly passed its tongue&mdash;which
+resembled that of the great
+anteater&mdash;round a cold chicken conveniently
+adjacent.</div>
+
+<p>Five minutes later the window
+framed another picture&mdash;this time
+a girl of twenty, white-clad and wearing
+a powder-blue felt hat, caught up
+on one side by a silver buckle which
+twinkled in the hot morning sun.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span>
+The curate started to his feet. Excalibur,
+who was now lying on the
+hearthrug dismembering the chicken,
+thumped his tail guiltily on the floor,
+but made no attempt to rise.</p>
+
+<p>"I am very sorry," said Eileen,
+"but I am afraid my dog is trespassing.
+May I call him out?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly!" said the curate.
+"But"&mdash;he racked his brains to
+devise some means of delaying the
+departure of this radiant, fragrant
+vision&mdash;"he is not the least in the
+way. I am very glad of his company;
+it was most neighborly of him to call.
+After all, I suppose he is one of
+my parishioners. And&mdash;and"&mdash;he
+blushed&mdash;"I hope you are, too."</p>
+
+<p>Eileen gave him her most entrancing
+smile, and from that hour the curate
+ceased to be his own master.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I suppose you are Mr. Gilmore,"
+said Eileen.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I have been here only three
+weeks and I have not met every one
+yet."</p>
+
+<p>"I have been away for two
+months," Eileen mentioned.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you must have been,"
+said the curate, rather subtly for him.</p>
+
+<p>"I think my brother-in-law called
+on you a few days ago," continued
+Eileen, on whom the curate's last remark
+had made a most favorable
+impression. She mentioned my name.</p>
+
+<p>"I was going to return the call this
+very afternoon," said the curate.
+And he firmly believed that he was
+speaking the truth. "Won't you
+come in? We have an excellent chaperon,"
+indicating Excalibur. "I will
+come and open the door."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Well, he certainly won't come out
+unless I come and fetch him," admitted
+Eileen thoughtfully.</p>
+
+<p>A moment later the curate was at
+the front door and led his visitor
+across the little hall into the sitting-room.
+He had not been absent more
+than thirty seconds, but during that
+time a plateful of sausages had mysteriously
+disappeared; and, as they
+entered, Excalibur was apologetically
+settling down on the hearthrug with a
+cottage loaf between his paws.</p>
+
+<p>Eileen uttered cries of dismay and
+apology, but the curate would have
+none of them.</p>
+
+<p>"My fault entirely!" he insisted.
+"I have no right to be breakfasting
+at this hour; but this is my day off.
+You see I take early Service every
+morning at seven; but on Wednesdays<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span>
+we cut it out&mdash;omit it and
+have full Matins at ten. So I get up
+at half-past nine, take Service at ten,
+and come back to my rooms at eleven
+and have breakfast. It is my weekly
+treat."</p>
+
+<p>"You deserve it," said Eileen feelingly.
+Her religious exercises were
+limited to going to church on Sunday
+morning and coming out, if possible,
+after the Litany. "And how do you
+like Much Moreham?"</p>
+
+<p>"I did not like it at all when I
+came," said the curate, "but recently
+I have begun to enjoy myself
+immensely." He did not say how
+recently.</p>
+
+<p>"Were you in London before?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;in the East End. It was
+pretty hard work, but a useful experience.
+I feel rather lost here during<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span>
+my spare time. I get so little exercise.
+In London I used to slip away
+for an occasional outing in a Leander
+scratch eight, and that kept me fit. I
+am inclined," he added ruefully, "to
+put on flesh."</p>
+
+<p>"Leander? Are you a Blue?"</p>
+
+<p>The curate nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"You know about rowing, I see,"
+he said appreciatively. "The worst
+of rowing," he continued, "is that it
+takes up so much of a man's time that
+he has no opportunity of practicing
+anything else&mdash;cricket, for instance.
+All curates ought to be able to play
+cricket. I do my best; but there isn't
+a single boy in the Sunday School who
+can't bowl me. It's humiliating!"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you play tennis at all?"
+asked Eileen.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, in a way."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I am sure my sister will be pleased
+if you come and have a game with us
+some afternoon."</p>
+
+<p>The enraptured curate had already
+opened his mouth to accept this demure
+invitation when Excalibur, rising
+from the hearthrug, stretched
+himself luxuriously and wagged his
+tail, thereby removing three pipes,
+an inkstand, a tobacco jar, and a
+half-completed sermon from the writing
+table.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="V" id="V"></a>V</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Excalibur</span> was heavily overworked
+in his new r&ocirc;le of chaperon
+during the next three or four weeks,
+and any dog less ready to oblige than
+himself might have felt a little aggrieved
+at the treatment to which he
+was subjected.</p>
+
+<p>There was the case of the tennis
+lawn, for instance. He had always
+regarded this as his own particular
+sanctuary, dedicated to reflection and
+repose; but now the net was stretched
+across it and Eileen and the curate
+performed antics all over the court
+with rackets and small white balls
+which, though they did not hurt Excalibur,
+kept him awake. It did not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span>
+occur to him to convey himself elsewhere,
+for his mind moved slowly;
+and the united blandishments of the
+players failed to bring the desirability
+of such a course home to him. He
+continued to lie in his favorite spot
+on the sunny side of the court, looking
+injured but forgiving, or slumbering
+perseveringly amid the storm that
+raged round him.</p>
+
+<p>It was quite impossible to move
+Excalibur once he had decided to remain
+where he was; so Eileen and the
+curate agreed to regard him as a sort
+of artificial excrescence, like the buttress
+in a fives court. If the ball hit
+him, as it frequently did, the player
+waiting for it was at liberty either to
+play it or claim a let. This arrangement
+added a piquant and pleasing
+variety to what is too often&mdash;especially<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span>
+when indulged in by mediocre
+players&mdash;a very dull game.</p>
+
+<p>Worse was to follow, however. One
+day Eileen and the curate conducted
+Excalibur to a neighboring mountain
+range&mdash;at least, so it appeared to
+Excalibur&mdash;and played another ball
+game. This time they employed long
+sticks with iron heads, and two balls,
+which, though they were much smaller
+than tennis balls, were incredibly
+hard and painful. Excalibur, though
+willing to help and anxious to please,
+could not supervise both the balls at
+once. As sure as he ran to retrieve
+one the other came after him and
+took him unfairly in the rear. Excalibur
+was the gentlest of creatures, but
+the most perfect gentleman has his
+dignity to consider.</p>
+
+<p>After having been struck for the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span>
+third time by one of these balls he
+whipped round, picked it up in his
+mouth and gave it a tiny pinch, just
+as a warning. At least, he thought it
+was a tiny pinch. The ball retaliated
+with unexpected ferocity. It twisted
+and turned. It emitted long, snaky
+spirals of some elastic substance,
+which clogged his teeth and tickled
+his throat and wound themselves
+round his tongue and nearly choked
+him. Panic-stricken, he ran to his
+mistress, who, with weeping and with
+laughter, removed the writhing horror
+from his jaws and comforted him
+with fair words.</p>
+
+<p>After that Excalibur realized that
+it is wiser to walk behind golfers than
+in front of them. It was a boring
+business, though, and very exhausting,
+for he loathed exercise of every<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span>
+kind; and his only periods of repose
+were the occasions on which the expedition
+came to a halt on certain
+small, flat lawns, each of which contained
+a hole with a flag in it.</p>
+
+<p>Here Excalibur would lie down,
+with the contented sigh of a tired
+child, and go to sleep. As he almost
+invariably lay down between the hole
+and the ball, the players agreed to regard
+him as a bunker. Eileen putted
+round him; but the curate&mdash;who
+had little regard for the humbler
+works of creation, Excalibur thought&mdash;used
+to take his mashie and attempt
+a lofting shot, an enterprise in
+which he almost invariably failed, to
+Excalibur's great inconvenience.</p>
+
+<p>Country walks were more tolerable,
+for Eileen's supervision of his movements,
+which was usually marked by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span>
+an officious severity, was sensibly relaxed
+on these days and Excalibur
+found himself at liberty to range
+abroad amid the heath and through
+the coppices, engaged in a pastime
+that he imagined was hunting.</p>
+
+<p>One hot afternoon, wandering into
+a clearing, he encountered a hare.
+The hare, which was suffering from
+extreme panic, owing to a terrifying
+noise behind it,&mdash;the blast of the
+newest and most vulgar motor horn,
+to be precise,&mdash;was bolting right
+across the clearing. After the manner
+of hares where objects directly
+in front of them are concerned, the
+fugitive entirely failed to perceive
+Excalibur and, indeed, ran right underneath
+him on its way to cover.
+Excalibur was so unstrung by this
+adventure that he ran back to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span>
+where he had left Eileen and the
+curate.</p>
+
+<p>They were sitting side by side on
+the grass and the curate was holding
+Eileen's hand.</p>
+
+<p>Excalibur advanced on them thankfully
+and indicated by an ingratiating
+smile that a friendly remark or
+other recognition of his presence
+would be gratefully received; but
+neither took the slightest notice of
+him. They continued to gaze straight
+before them in a mournful and abstracted
+fashion. They looked not
+so much at Excalibur as through him.
+First the hare, then Eileen and the
+curate! Excalibur began to fear that
+he had become invisible, or at least
+transparent. Greatly agitated he
+drifted away into a neighboring plantation
+full of young pheasants. Here<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span>
+he encountered a keeper, who was
+able to dissipate his gloomy suspicions
+for him without any difficulty
+whatsoever. But Eileen and the curate
+sat on.</p>
+
+<p>"A hundred pounds a year!" repeated
+the curate. "A pass degree
+and no influence! I can't preach and
+I have no money of my own. Dearest,
+I ought never to have told
+you."</p>
+
+<p>"Told me what?" inquired Eileen
+softly. She knew quite well; but she
+was a woman, and a woman can never
+let well enough alone.</p>
+
+<p>The curate, turning to Eileen, delivered
+himself of a statement of
+three words. Eileen's reply was a
+softly whispered <i>Tu quoque!</i></p>
+
+<p>"It had to happen, dear," she
+added cheerfully, for she did not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span>
+share the curate's burden of responsibility
+in the matter. "If you had
+not told me we should have been miserable
+separately. Now that you
+have told me, we can be miserable together.
+And when two people who&mdash;who&mdash;"
+She hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>The curate supplied the relative
+sentence. Eileen nodded her head in
+acknowledgment.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; who are&mdash;like you and me&mdash;are
+miserable together, they are
+happy! See?"</p>
+
+<p>"I see," said the curate gravely.
+"Yes, you are right there; but we
+can't go on living on a diet of joint
+misery. We shall have to face the
+future. What are we going to do
+about it?"</p>
+
+<p>Then Eileen spoke up boldly for
+the first time.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Gerald," she said, "we shall simply
+have to manage on a hundred a
+year."</p>
+
+<p>But the curate shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"Dearest, I should be an utter cad
+if I allowed you to do such a thing,"
+he said. "A hundred a year is less
+than two pounds a week!"</p>
+
+<p>"A lot of people live on less than
+two pounds a week," Eileen pointed
+out longingly.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; I know. If we could rent a
+three-shilling cottage and I could go
+about with a spotted handkerchief
+round my neck, and you could scrub
+the doorsteps <i>coram populo</i>, we might
+be very comfortable; but the clergy
+belong to the black-coated class, and
+people in the lower ranks of the black-coated
+class are the poorest people in
+the whole wide world. They have to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span>
+spend money on luxuries&mdash;collars
+and charwomen, and so on&mdash;which
+a workingman can spend entirely on
+necessities. It wouldn't merely mean
+no pretty dresses and a lot of hard
+work for you, Eileen. It would mean
+starvation! Believe me&mdash;I know!
+Some of my friends have tried it&mdash;and
+I know!"</p>
+
+<p>"What happened to them?" asked
+Eileen fearfully.</p>
+
+<p>"They all had to come down in the
+end&mdash;some soon, some late, but all
+in time&mdash;to taking parish relief."</p>
+
+<p>"Parish relief?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; not official, regulation, rate-aided
+charity, but the infinitely more
+humiliating charity of their well-to-do
+neighbors&mdash;quiet checks, second-hand
+dresses, and things like that.
+No, little girl; you and I are too<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span>
+proud&mdash;too proud of the cloth&mdash;for
+that. We will never give a handle to
+the people who are always waiting to
+have a fling at the improvident clergy&mdash;not
+if it breaks our hearts, we
+won't!"</p>
+
+<p>"You are quite right, dear," said
+Eileen quietly. "We must wait."</p>
+
+<p>Then the curate said the most difficult
+thing he had said yet:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I shall have to go away from
+here."</p>
+
+<p>Eileen's hand turned cold in his.</p>
+
+<p>"Why?" she whispered; but she
+knew.</p>
+
+<p>"Because if we wait here we shall
+wait forever. The last curate in
+Much Moreham&mdash;what happened
+to him?"</p>
+
+<p>"He died."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;at fifty-five; and he had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span>
+been here for thirty years. Preferment
+does not come in sleepy villages.
+I must go back to London."</p>
+
+<p>"The East End?"</p>
+
+<p>"East or south or north&mdash;it doesn't
+signify. Anywhere but west. In
+the east and south and north there is
+always work to be done&mdash;hard work.
+And if a parson has no money and
+no brains and no influence, and can
+only work&mdash;run clothing clubs and
+soup kitchens, and reclaim drunkards&mdash;London
+is the place for him. So off
+I go to London, my beloved, to lay
+the foundations of Paradise for you
+and me&mdash;for you and me!"</p>
+
+<p>There was a long silence. Then the
+pair rose to their feet and smiled on
+each other extremely cheerfully, because
+each suspected the other&mdash;rightly&mdash;of
+low spirits.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Shall we tell people?" asked the
+curate.</p>
+
+<p>Eileen thought, and shook her
+head.</p>
+
+<p>"No," she said; "nicer not. It will
+make a splendid secret."</p>
+
+<p>"Just between us two, eh?" said
+the curate, kindling at the thought.</p>
+
+<p>"Just between us two," agreed
+Eileen. And the curate kissed her
+very solemnly. A secret is a comfortable
+thing to lovers, especially when
+they are young and about to be lonely.</p>
+
+<p>At this moment a leonine head,
+supported on a lumbering and ill-balanced
+body, was thrust in between
+them. It was Excalibur, taking sanctuary
+with the Church from the
+vengeance of the Law.</p>
+
+<p>"We might tell Scally, I think,"
+said Eileen.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Rather!" assented the curate.
+"He introduced us."</p>
+
+<p>So Eileen communicated the great
+news to Excalibur.</p>
+
+<p>"You do approve, dear&mdash;don't
+you?" she said.</p>
+
+<p>Excalibur, instinctively realizing
+that this was an occasion when liberties
+might be taken, stood up on his
+hind legs and placed his forepaws on
+his mistress's shoulders. The curate
+supported them both.</p>
+
+<p>"And you will use your influence to
+get us a living wage from somewhere&mdash;won't
+you, old man?" added the
+curate.</p>
+
+<p>Excalibur tried to lick both their
+faces at once&mdash;and succeeded.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VI" id="VI"></a>VI</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">So</span> the curate went away, but not
+to London. He was sent instead to
+a great manufacturing town in the
+north, where the work was equally
+hard, and where Anglican and Roman
+and Salvationist fought grimly side
+by side against the powers of drink
+and disease and crime. During these
+days, which ultimately rolled into
+years, the curate lost his boyish
+freshness and his unfortunate tendency
+to put on flesh. He grew thin
+and lathy; and, though his smile was
+as ready and as magnetic as ever, he
+seldom laughed.</p>
+
+<p>He never failed, however, to write
+a cheerful letter to Eileen every Monday
+morning. He was getting a hundred<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span>
+and twenty pounds a year now;
+so his chances of becoming a millionaire
+had increased by twenty per
+cent.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime his two confederates,
+Excalibur and Eileen, continued to
+reside at Much Moreham. Eileen
+was still the recognized beauty of the
+district, but she spread her net less
+promiscuously than of yore. Girl
+friends she always had in plenty, but
+it was noticed that she avoided intimacy
+with all eligible males of over
+twenty and under forty-five years of
+age. No one knew the reason for this
+except Excalibur. Eileen used to read
+Gerald's letters aloud to him every
+Tuesday morning; sometimes the
+letter contained a friendly message
+to Excalibur himself.</p>
+
+<p>In acknowledgment of this courtesy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span>
+Excalibur always sent his love
+to the curate&mdash;Eileen wrote every
+Friday&mdash;and he and Eileen walked
+together, rain or shine, on Friday
+afternoons to post the letter in the
+next village. Much Moreham's post
+office was too small to remain oblivious
+to such a regular correspondence.</p>
+
+<p>The curate was seen no more in his
+old parish. Railroad journeys are
+costly things and curates' holidays
+rare. Besides, he had no overt excuse
+for coming. And so life went on for
+five years. The curate and Eileen
+may have met during that period, for
+Eileen sometimes went away visiting.
+As Excalibur was not privileged to
+accompany her on these occasions he
+had no means of checking her movements;
+but the chances are that she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span>
+never saw the curate, or I think she
+would have told Excalibur about it.
+We simply have to tell some one.</p>
+
+<p>Then, quite suddenly, came a tremendous
+change in Excalibur's life.
+Eileen's brother-in-law&mdash;he was Excalibur's
+master no longer, for Excalibur
+had been transferred to Eileen
+by deed of gift, at her own request, on
+her first birthday after the curate's
+departure&mdash;fell ill. There was an
+operation and a crisis, and a deal
+of unhappiness at Much Moreham;
+then came convalescence, followed
+by directions for a sea voyage of six
+months. It was arranged that the
+house should be shut up and the children
+sent to their grandmother at
+Bath.</p>
+
+<p>"That settles everything and
+everybody," said the gaunt man on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span>
+the sofa, "except you, Eileen? What
+about you?"</p>
+
+<p>"What about Scally?" inquired
+Eileen.</p>
+
+<p>Her brother-in-law apologetically
+admitted that he had forgotten
+Scally.</p>
+
+<p>"Not quite myself at present," he
+mentioned in extenuation.</p>
+
+<p>"I am going to Aunt Ph&oelig;be," announced
+Eileen.</p>
+
+<p>"You are never going to introduce
+Scally into Aunt Ph&oelig;be's establishment!"
+cried Eileen's sister.</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Eileen, "I am not."
+She rubbed Excalibur's matted head
+affectionately. "But I have arranged
+for the dear man's future. He is
+going to visit friends in the north.
+Aren't you, darling?"</p>
+
+<p>Excalibur, to whom this arrangement<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span>
+had been privately communicated
+some days before, wagged his
+tail and endeavored to look as intelligent
+and knowing as possible. He
+was not going to put his beloved mistress
+to shame by admitting to her
+relatives that he had not the faintest
+idea what she was talking about.</p>
+
+<p>However, he was soon to understand.
+The next day Eileen took him
+up to London by train. This in itself
+was a tremendous adventure, though
+alarming at first. He traveled in the
+guard's van, it having been found
+quite impossible to get him into an
+ordinary compartment&mdash;or, rather,
+to get any one else into the compartment
+after he lay down on the
+floor. So he traveled with the guard,
+chained to the vacuum brake, and
+shared that kindly official's dinner.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>When they reached the terminus
+there was much bustle and confusion.
+The door of the van was thrown open
+and porters dragged out the luggage
+and submitted samples thereof to
+overheated passengers, who invariably
+failed to recognize their own
+property and claimed someone else's.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, when the luggage was all
+cleared out, the guard took off Excalibur's
+chain and facetiously invited
+him to alight for London Town. Excalibur,
+lumbering delicately across
+the ribbed floor of the van, arrived
+at the open doorway. Outside on the
+platform he espied Eileen. Beside her
+stood a tall figure in black.</p>
+
+<p>With one tremendous roar of rapturous
+recognition, Excalibur leaped
+straight out of the van and launched
+himself fairly and squarely at the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span>
+curate's chest. Luckily the curate
+saw him coming.</p>
+
+<p>"He knows you, all right," said
+Eileen with satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>"He appears to," replied the curate.
+"Afraid I don't dance the tango,
+Scally, old man; but thanks for the
+invitation, all the same!"</p>
+
+<p>Excalibur spent the rest of the day
+in London, where it must be admitted
+he caused a genuine sensation&mdash;no
+mean feat in such a blas&eacute; place.</p>
+
+<p>In Bond Street the traffic had to
+be held up both ways by benevolent
+policemen, because Excalibur, feeling
+pleasantly tired, lay down to rest.</p>
+
+<p>When evening came they all dined
+together in a cheap little restaurant
+in Soho and were very gay, with the
+gayety of people who are whistling to
+keep their courage up. After dinner<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span>
+Eileen said good-bye, first to Excalibur
+and then to the curate. She was
+much more demonstrative toward
+the former than toward the latter,
+which is the way of women.</p>
+
+<p>Then the curate put Eileen into a
+taxi and, having with the aid of the
+commissionaire extracted Excalibur
+from underneath&mdash;he had gone there
+under some confused impression that
+it was the guard's van again&mdash;said
+good-bye for the last time; and Eileen,
+smiling bravely, was whirled away
+out of sight.</p>
+
+<p>As the taxi turned a distant corner
+and disappeared from view, it suddenly
+occurred to Excalibur that he
+had been left behind. Accordingly he
+set off in pursuit.</p>
+
+<p>The curate finally ran him to earth
+in Buckingham Palace Road, which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span>
+is a long chase from Soho, where he
+was sitting on the pavement, to the
+grave inconvenience of the inhabitants
+of Pimlico, and refusing to be
+comforted. It took his new master
+the best part of an hour to get him
+to Euston Road, where it was discovered
+they had missed the night
+mail to the north. Accordingly they
+walked to a rival station and took
+another train.</p>
+
+<p>In all this Excalibur was the instrument
+of Destiny, as you shall hear.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VII" id="VII"></a>VII</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> coroner's jury was inclined at
+the time to blame the signalman, but
+the Board of Trade inquiry established
+the fact that the accident was
+due to the engine-driver's neglect to
+keep a proper lookout. However, as
+the driver was dead and his fireman
+with him, the law very leniently took
+no further action in the matter.</p>
+
+<p>About three o'clock in the morning,
+as the train was crossing a bleak
+Yorkshire moor seven miles from Tetley
+Junction, the curate suddenly left
+the seat on which he lay stretched
+dreaming of Eileen and flew across
+the compartment on to the recumbent
+form of a stout commercial traveler.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span>
+Then he rebounded to the floor
+and woke up&mdash;unhurt.</p>
+
+<p>"'Tis an accident, lad!" gasped
+the commercial traveler as he got his
+wind.</p>
+
+<p>"So it seems," said the curate.
+"Hold tight! She's rocking!"</p>
+
+<p>The commercial traveler, who was
+mechanically groping under the seat
+for his boots,&mdash;commercial travelers
+always remove their boots in third-class
+railroad compartments when
+on night journeys,&mdash;followed the curate's
+advice and braced himself with
+his feet against the opposite seat for
+the coming <i>bouleversement</i>.</p>
+
+<p>After the first shock the train had
+gathered way again&mdash;the light engine
+into which it had charged had
+been thrown clear off the track&mdash;but
+only for a moment. Suddenly the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span>
+reeling engine of the express left the
+rails and staggered drunkenly along
+the ballast. A moment later it turned
+over, taking the guard's van and the
+first four coaches with it, and the
+whole train came to a standstill.</p>
+
+<p>It was a corridor train, and unfortunately
+for Gerald Gilmore and the
+commercial traveler their coach fell
+over corridor side downward. There
+was no door on the other side of the
+compartment&mdash;only three windows,
+crossed by a stout brass bar. These
+windows had suddenly become sky-lights.</p>
+
+<p>They fought their way out at last.
+Once he got the window open, the
+curate experienced little difficulty in
+getting through; but the commercial
+traveler was corpulent and tenacious
+of his boots, which he held persistently<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span>
+in one hand while Gerald
+tugged at the other. Still, he was
+hauled up at last, and the two slid
+down the perpendicular roof of the
+coach to the permanent way.</p>
+
+<p>"That's done, anyway!" panted
+the drummer; and sitting down he
+began to put on his boots.</p>
+
+<p>"There's plenty more to do," said
+the curate grimly, pulling off his coat.
+"The front of the train is on fire.
+Come!"</p>
+
+<p>He turned and ran. Almost at his
+first step he cannoned into a heavy
+body in rapid motion. It was Excalibur.</p>
+
+<p>"That you, old friend?" observed
+the curate. "I was on my way to see
+about you. Now that you are out,
+you may as well come and bear a
+hand."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The pair sprinted along the line
+toward the blazing coaches.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>It was dawn&mdash;gray, weeping, and
+cheerless&mdash;on Tetley Moor. Another
+engine had come up from behind
+to take what was left of the train
+back to the Junction. Seven coaches,
+including the lordly sleeping saloon,
+stood intact; four, with the engine
+and tender, lay where they had fallen,
+a mass of charred wood and twisted
+metal.</p>
+
+<p>A motor car belonging to a doctor
+stood in the roadway a hundred yards
+off, and its owner, with a brother of
+the craft who had been a passenger
+on the train, was attending to the
+injured. There were fourteen of these
+altogether, mostly suffering from
+burns. These were made as comfortable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span>
+as possible in sleeping berths
+their owners had vacated.</p>
+
+<p>"Take your seats, please!" said
+the surviving guard in a subdued
+voice. He spoke at the direction of a
+big man in a heavy overcoat, who
+appeared to have taken charge of the
+salvage operations. The passengers
+clambered up into the train.</p>
+
+<p>Only one hesitated. He was a long,
+lean young man, black from head to
+foot with soot and oil. His left arm
+was badly burned; and seeing a doctor
+disengaged at last, he came forward
+to have it dressed.</p>
+
+<p>The big man in the heavy overcoat
+approached him.</p>
+
+<p>"My name is Caversham," he said.
+"I happen to be a director of the
+company. If you will give me your
+name and address I will see to it that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span>
+your services to-night are suitably
+recognized. The way you got those
+two children out of the first coach
+was splendid, if I may be allowed to
+say so. We did not even know they
+were there."</p>
+
+<p>The young man's teeth suddenly
+flashed out into a white smile against
+the blackness of his face.</p>
+
+<p>"Neither did I, sir," he said. "Let
+me introduce you to the responsible
+party."</p>
+
+<p>He whistled. Out of the gray dawn
+loomed an eerie monster, badly
+singed, wagging its tail.</p>
+
+<p>"Scally, old man," said the curate,
+"this gentleman wants to present you
+with an illuminated address. Thank
+him prettily!" Then, to the doctor:
+"I'm ever so much obliged to you;
+it's quite comfortable now."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He began stiffly to pull on his coat
+and waistcoat. Lord Caversham,
+lending a hand, noted the waistcoat
+and said quickly:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Will you travel in my compartment?
+I should like to have a word
+with you if I may."</p>
+
+<p>"I think I had better go and have
+a look at those poor folks in the
+sleeper first," replied the curate.
+"They may require my services professionally."</p>
+
+<p>"At the Junction, then, perhaps?"
+suggested Lord Caversham.</p>
+
+<p>At the Junction, however, the curate
+found a special waiting to proceed
+north by a loop line; and, being
+in no mind to receive compliments or
+waste his substance on a hotel, he departed
+forthwith, taking his charred
+confederate, Excalibur, with him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VIII" id="VIII"></a>VIII</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Fortune</span>, once she takes a fancy
+to you, is not readily shaken off, however,
+as most successful men are always
+trying to forget. A fortnight
+later Lord Caversham, leaving his
+hotel in a great northern town, encountered
+an acquaintance he had no
+difficulty whatever in recognizing.</p>
+
+<p>It was Excalibur, jammed fast between
+two stationary tramcars&mdash;he
+had not yet shaken down to town life&mdash;submitting
+to a painful but effective
+process of extraction at the hands
+of a posse of policemen and tram conductors,
+shrilly directed by a small
+but commanding girl of the lodging-house-drudge
+variety.</p>
+
+<p>When this enterprise had been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span>
+brought to a successful conclusion
+and the congested traffic moved on
+by the overheated policemen, Lord
+Caversham crossed the street and
+tapped the damsel on the shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Can you kindly inform me where
+the owner of that dog may be found?"
+he inquired politely.</p>
+
+<p>"Yas. Se'nty-one Pilgrim Street.
+But 'e won't sell him."</p>
+
+<p>"Should I be likely to find him at
+home if I called now?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yas. Bin in bed since the accident.
+Got a nasty arm."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps you would not mind accompanying
+me back to Pilgrim
+Street in my car?"</p>
+
+<p>After that Mary Ellen's mind became
+an incoherent blur. A stately
+limousine glided up; Mary Ellen was
+handed in by a footman and Excalibur<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span>
+was stuffed in after her in installments.
+The grand gentleman entered
+by the opposite door and sat down
+beside her; but Mary Ellen was much
+too dazed to converse with him.</p>
+
+<p>The arrival of the equipage in Pilgrim
+Street was the greatest moment
+of Mary Ellen's life.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime upstairs in the first-floor
+front the curate, lying in his uncomfortable
+flock bed, was saying:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"If you really mean it, sir&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I do mean it. If those two children
+had been burned to death unnoticed
+I should never have forgiven
+myself, and the public would never
+have forgiven the company."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, sir, since you say that, you&mdash;well,
+you could do me a service.
+Could you possibly use your influence
+to get me a billet&mdash;I'm not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span>
+asking for an incumbency; any old
+curacy would do&mdash;a billet I could
+marry on?" He flushed scarlet. "I&mdash;we
+have been waiting a long time
+now."</p>
+
+<p>There was a long silence, and the
+curate wondered whether he had
+been too mercenary in his request.
+Then Lord Caversham asked:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"What are you getting at present?"</p>
+
+<p>"A hundred and twenty a year."</p>
+
+<p>This was about two thirds of the
+salary Lord Caversham paid his
+chauffeur. He asked another question
+in his curious, abrupt staccato
+manner:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"How much do you want?"</p>
+
+<p>"We could make both ends meet on
+two hundred; but another fifty would
+enable me to make her a lot more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span>
+comfortable," said the curate wistfully.</p>
+
+<p>The great man surveyed him silently&mdash;wonderingly,
+too, if the curate
+had known. Presently he asked:</p>
+
+<p>"Afraid of hard work?"</p>
+
+<p>"No work is hard to a man with a
+wife and a home of his own," replied
+the curate with simple fervor.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Caversham smiled grimly.
+He had more homes of his own than
+he could conveniently live in, and he
+had been married three times; but
+even he found work hard now and
+then.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder!" he said. "Well, good-afternoon.
+I should like to be introduced
+to your fianc&eacute;e some day."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="IX" id="IX"></a>IX</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">A tramp</span> opened the rectory gate
+and shambled up the neat gravel
+walk toward the house. Taking a
+short cut through the shrubbery he
+emerged suddenly on a little lawn.</p>
+
+<p>On the lawn a lady was sitting in a
+basket chair beside a perambulator,
+the occupant of which was slumbering
+peacefully. A small but intensely
+capable nursemaid, prone on the
+grass in a curvilinear attitude, was
+acting as tunnel to a young gentleman
+of three who was impersonating
+a locomotive.</p>
+
+<p>The tramp approached the group
+and asked huskily for alms. He was
+a burly and unpleasant specimen of
+his class&mdash;a class all too numerous<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span>
+on the outskirts of the great industrial
+parish of Smeltingborough. The
+lady in the basket chair looked up.</p>
+
+<p>"The rector is out," she said. "If
+you go into the town you will find him
+at the Church Hall and he will investigate
+your case."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, the rector is out, is he?" repeated
+the tramp in tones of distinct
+satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Eileen.</p>
+
+<p>The tramp advanced another pace.</p>
+
+<p>"Give us half a crown!" he said.
+"I haven't had a bite of food since
+yesterday, lady&mdash;nor a drink neither,"
+he added humorously.</p>
+
+<p>"Please go away!" said the lady.
+"You know where to find the rector."</p>
+
+<p>The tramp smiled unpleasantly,
+but made no attempt to move.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You refuse to go away?" the
+lady said.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll go for half a crown," replied
+the tramp with the gracious air of
+one anxious to oblige a lady.</p>
+
+<p>"Watch baby for a moment, Mary
+Ellen," said Eileen.</p>
+
+<p>She rose and disappeared into the
+house, followed by the gratified smile
+of the tramp. He was a reasonable
+man and knew that ladies did not
+wear pockets.</p>
+
+<p>"Thirsty weather," he remarked
+affably.</p>
+
+<p>Mary Ellen, keeping one hand on
+the shoulder of Master Gerald Caversham
+Gilmore and the other on the
+edge of the baby's perambulator,
+merely chuckled sardonically.</p>
+
+<p>The next moment there were footsteps
+round the corner of the house<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span>
+and Eileen reappeared. She was
+clinging with both hands to the collar
+of an enormous dog. Its tongue lolled
+from its great jaws; its tail waved
+menacingly from side to side; its
+great limbs were bent as though for a
+spring. Its eyes were half closed as
+though to focus the exact distance.</p>
+
+<p>"Run!" cried Eileen to the tramp.
+"I can't hold him in much longer!"</p>
+
+<p>This was true enough, except that
+when Eileen said "in" she meant
+"up." But the tramp did not linger
+to discuss grammar. There was a
+scurry of feet, the gate banged and
+he was gone.</p>
+
+<p>With a sigh of relief Eileen let go of
+Excalibur's collar. Excalibur promptly
+collapsed on the grass and went to
+sleep again.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Scally, by Ian Hay
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Scally
+       The Story of a Perfect Gentleman
+
+
+Author: Ian Hay
+
+
+
+Release Date: April 4, 2009  [eBook #28495]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SCALLY***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Emmy, and the Project Gutenberg
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustration.
+      See 28495-h.htm or 28495-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/8/4/9/28495/28495-h/28495-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/8/4/9/28495/28495-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+SCALLY
+
+The Story of a Perfect Gentleman
+
+by
+
+IAN HAY
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+By Ian Hay
+
+          SCALLY: THE STORY OF A PERFECT GENTLEMAN. With Frontispiece.
+          A KNIGHT ON WHEELS.
+          HAPPY-GO-LUCKY. Illustrated by Charles E. Brock.
+          A SAFETY MATCH. With frontispiece.
+          A MAN'S MAN. With frontispiece.
+          THE RIGHT STUFF. With frontispiece.
+
+          HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
+          BOSTON AND NEW YORK
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: THE LEADING OBJECT PROVED TO BE A SMALL, WET, SHIVERING,
+WHIMPERING PUPPY]
+
+
+SCALLY
+
+The Story of a Perfect Gentleman
+
+by
+
+IAN HAY
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+Boston and New York
+Houghton Mifflin Company
+MDCCCCXV
+
+Copyright, 1914, by the Curtis Publishing Company
+Copyright, 1915, by Ian Hay Beith
+All Rights Reserved
+
+Published November 1915
+
+
+
+
+SCALLY
+
+
+
+
+SCALLY
+
+THE STORY OF A PERFECT GENTLEMAN
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+"BETTERSEA trem? Right, miss!" My wife, who has been married long
+enough to feel deeply gratified at being mistaken for a maiden lady,
+smiled seraphically at the conductor, and allowed herself to be hoisted
+up the steps of the majestic vehicle provided by a paternal county
+council to convey passengers--at a loss to the ratepayers, I
+understand--from the Embankment to Battersea.
+
+Presently we ground our way round a curve and began to cross Westminster
+Bridge. The conductor, whose innate cockney bonhomie his high official
+position had failed to eradicate, presented himself before us and
+collected our fares.
+
+"What part of Bettersea did you require, sir?" he asked of me.
+
+I coughed and answered evasively:--
+
+"Oh, about the middle."
+
+"We haven't been there before," added my wife, quite gratuitously.
+
+The conductor smiled indulgently and punched our tickets.
+
+"I'll tell you when to get down," he said, and left us.
+
+For some months we had been considering the question of buying a dog,
+and a good deal of our spare time--or perhaps I should say of my spare
+time, for a woman's time is naturally all her own--had been pleasantly
+occupied in discussing the matter. Having at length committed ourselves
+to the purchase of the animal, we proceeded to consider such details as
+breed, sex, and age.
+
+My wife vacillated between a bloodhound, because bloodhounds are so
+aristocratic in appearance, and a Pekinese, because they are _dernier
+cri_. We like to be _dernier cri_ even in Much Moreham. Her younger
+sister, Eileen, who spends a good deal of time with us, having no
+parents of her own, suggested an Old English sheep dog, explaining that
+it would be company for my wife when I was away from home. I coldly
+recommended a mastiff.
+
+Our son John, aged three, on being consulted, expressed a preference for
+twelve tigers in a box, and was not again invited to participate in the
+debate.
+
+Finally we decided on an Aberdeen terrier, of an age and sex to be
+settled by circumstances, and I was instructed to communicate with a
+gentleman in the North who advertised in our morning paper that Aberdeen
+terriers were his specialty. In due course we received a reply. The
+advertiser recommended two animals--namely, Celtic Chief, aged four
+months, and Scotia's Pride, aged one year. Pedigrees were inclosed, each
+about as complicated as the family tree of the House of Hapsburg; and
+the favor of an early reply was requested, as both dogs were being hotly
+bid for by an anonymous client in Constantinople.
+
+The price of Celtic Chief was twenty guineas; that of Scotia's Pride,
+for reasons heavily underlined in the pedigree, was twenty-seven. The
+advertiser, who resided in Aberdeen, added that these prices did not
+cover cost of carriage. We decided not to stand in the way of the
+gentleman in Constantinople, and having sent back the pedigrees by
+return of post, resumed the debate.
+
+Finally Stella, my wife, said:--
+
+"We don't really want a dog with a pedigree. We only want something that
+will bark at beggars and be gentle with baby. Why not go to the Home for
+Lost Dogs at Battersea? I believe you can get any dog you like there for
+five shillings. We will run up to town next Wednesday and see about
+it--and I might get some clothes as well."
+
+Hence our presence on the tram.
+
+Presently the conductor, who had kindly pointed out to us such objects
+of local interest as the River Thames and the Houses of Parliament,
+stopped the tram in a crowded thoroughfare and announced that we were in
+Battersea.
+
+"Alight here," he announced facetiously, "for 'Ome for Lost Dawgs!"
+
+Guiltily realizing that there is many a true word spoken in jest, we
+obeyed him, and the tram went rocking and whizzing out of sight. We had
+eschewed a cab.
+
+"When you are only going to pay five shillings for a dog," my wife had
+pointed out, with convincing logic, "it is silly to go and pay perhaps
+another five shillings for a cab. It doubles the price of the dog at
+once. If we had been buying an expensive dog we might have taken a cab;
+but not for a five-shilling one."
+
+"Now," I inquired briskly, "how are we going to find this place?"
+
+"Haven't you any idea where it is?"
+
+"No. I have a sort of vague notion that it is on an island in the middle
+of the river, called the Isle of Dogs, or Barking Reach, or something
+like that. However, I have no doubt--"
+
+"Hadn't we better ask some one?" suggested Stella.
+
+I demurred.
+
+"If there is one thing I dislike," I said, "it is accosting total
+strangers and badgering them for information they don't possess--not
+that that will prevent them from giving it. If we start asking the way
+we shall find ourselves in Putney or Woolwich in no time!"
+
+"Yes, dear," said Stella soothingly.
+
+"Now I suggest--" My hand went to my pocket.
+
+"No, darling," interposed my wife, hastily; "not a map, please!" It is a
+curious psychological fact that women have a constitutional aversion to
+maps and railroad time-tables. They would rather consult a half-witted
+errand boy or a deaf railroad porter. "Do not let us make a spectacle of
+ourselves in the public streets again! I have not yet forgotten the day
+when you tried to find the Crystal Palace. Besides, it will only blow
+away. Ask that dear little boy there. He is looking at us so wistfully."
+
+Yes; I admit it was criminal folly. A man who asks a London street boy
+to be so kind as to direct him to a Home for Lost Dogs has only himself
+to thank for the consequence.
+
+The wistful little boy smiled up at us. He had a pinched face and large
+eyes.
+
+"Lost Dogs' 'Ome, sir?" he said courteously. "It's a good long way. Do
+you want to get there quick?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then if I was you, sir," replied the infant, edging to the mouth of an
+alleyway, "I should bite a policeman!" And, with an ear-splitting yell,
+he vanished.
+
+We walked on, hot-faced.
+
+"Little wretch!" said Stella.
+
+"We simply asked for it," I rejoined. "What are we going to do next?"
+
+My question was answered in a most incredible fashion, for at this
+moment a man emerged from a shop on our right and set off down the
+street before us. He wore a species of uniform; and emblazoned on the
+front of his hat was the information that he was an official of the
+Battersea Home for Lost and Starving Dogs.
+
+"Wait a minute and I will ask him," I said, starting forward.
+
+But my wife would not hear of it.
+
+"Certainly not," she replied. "If we ask him he will simply offer to
+show us the way. Then we shall have to talk to him--about hydrophobia,
+and lethal chambers, and distemper--and it may be for miles. I simply
+couldn't bear it! We shall have to tip him, too. Let us follow him
+quietly."
+
+To those who have never attempted to track a fellow creature
+surreptitiously through the streets of London on a hot day, the feat may
+appear simple. It is in reality a most exhausting, dilatory, and
+humiliating exercise. Our difficulty lay not so much in keeping our
+friend in sight as in avoiding frequent and unexpected collisions with
+him. The general idea, as they say on field days, was to keep about
+twenty yards behind him; but under certain circumstances distance has an
+uncanny habit of annihilating itself. The man himself was no hustler.
+Once or twice he stopped to light his pipe or converse with a friend.
+
+During these interludes Stella and I loafed guiltily on the pavement,
+pointing out to one another objects of local interest with the fatuous
+officiousness of people in the foreground of hotel advertisements.
+Occasionally he paused to contemplate the contents of a shop window. We
+gazed industriously into the window next door. Our first window, I
+recollect, was an undertaker's, with ready-printed expressions of grief
+for sale on white porcelain disks. We had time to read them all. The
+next was a butcher's. Here we stayed, perforce, so long that the
+proprietor, who was of the tribe that disposes of its wares almost
+entirely by personal canvass, came out into the street and endeavored to
+sell us a bullock's heart.
+
+Our quarry's next proceeding was to dive into a public house. We turned
+and surveyed one another.
+
+"What are we to do now?" inquired my wife.
+
+"Go inside, too," I replied with more enthusiasm than I had hitherto
+displayed. "At least, I think I ought to. You can please yourself."
+
+"I will not be left in the street," said Stella firmly. "We must just
+wait here together until he comes out."
+
+"There may be another exit," I objected. "We had better go in. I shall
+take something, just to keep up appearances; and you must sit down in
+the ladies' bar, or the snug, or whatever they call it."
+
+"Certainly not!" said Stella.
+
+We had arrived at this _impasse_ when the man suddenly reappeared,
+wiping his mouth. Instantly and silently we fell in behind him.
+
+For the first time the man appeared to notice our presence. He regarded
+us curiously, with a faint gleam of recognition in his eyes, and then
+set off down the street at a good pace. We followed, panting. Once or
+twice he looked back over his shoulder a little apprehensively, I
+thought. But we ploughed on.
+
+"We ought to get there soon at this pace," I gasped. "Hello! He's gone
+again!"
+
+"He turned down to the right," said Stella excitedly.
+
+The lust of the chase was fairly on us now. We swung eagerly round the
+corner into a quiet by-street. Our man was nowhere to be seen and the
+street was almost empty.
+
+"Come on!" said Stella. "He may have turned in somewhere."
+
+We hurried down the street. Suddenly, warned by a newly awakened and
+primitive instinct, I looked back. We had overrun our quarry. He had
+just emerged from some hiding place and was heading back toward the main
+street, looking fearfully over his shoulder. Once more we were in full
+cry.
+
+For the next five minutes we practically ran--all three of us. The man
+was obviously frightened out of his wits, and kept making frenzied and
+spasmodic spurts, from which we surmised that he was getting to the end
+of his powers of endurance.
+
+"If only we could overtake him," I said, hauling my exhausted spouse
+along by the arm, "we could explain that--"
+
+"He's gone again!" exclaimed Stella.
+
+She was right. The man had turned another corner. We followed him round
+hotfoot, and found ourselves in a prim little _cul-de-sac_, with villas
+on each side. Across the end of the street ran a high wall, obviously
+screening a railroad track.
+
+"We've got him!" I exclaimed.
+
+I felt as Moltke must have felt when he closed the circle at Sedan.
+
+"But where is the Dogs' Home, dear?" inquired Stella.
+
+The question was never answered, for at this moment the man ran up the
+steps of the fourth villa on the left and slipped a latchkey into the
+lock. The door closed behind him with a venomous snap and we were left
+alone in the street, guideless and dogless.
+
+A minute later the man appeared at the ground-floor window, accompanied
+by a female of commanding appearance. He pointed us out to her. Behind
+them we could dimly descry a white tablecloth, a tea cozy and covered
+dishes.
+
+The commanding female, after a prolonged and withering glare, plucked a
+hairpin from her head and ostentatiously proceeded to skewer together
+the starchy white curtains that framed the window. Privacy secured and
+the sanctity of the English home thus pointedly vindicated, she and her
+husband disappeared into the murky background, where they doubtless sat
+down to an excellent high tea. Exhausted and discomfited, we drifted
+away.
+
+"I am going home," said Stella in a hollow voice. "And I think," she
+added bitterly, "that it might have occurred to you to suggest that the
+creature might possibly be going from the Dogs' Home and not to it."
+
+I apologized. It is the simplest plan, really.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+IT was almost dark when the train arrived at our little country
+station. We set out to walk home by the short cut across the golf
+course.
+
+"Anyhow, we have saved five shillings," remarked Stella.
+
+"We paid half a crown for that taxi which took us back to Victoria
+Station," I reminded her.
+
+"Do not argue to-night, darling," responded my wife. "I simply cannot
+endure anything more."
+
+Plainly she was a little unstrung. Very considerately, I selected
+another topic.
+
+"I think our best plan," I said cheerfully, "would be to advertise for a
+dog."
+
+"I never wish to see a dog again," replied Stella.
+
+I surveyed her with some concern and said gently:--
+
+"I am afraid you are tired, dear."
+
+"No; I'm not."
+
+"A little shaken, perhaps?"
+
+"Nothing of the kind. Joe, what is that?"
+
+Stella's fingers bit deep into my biceps muscle, causing me considerable
+pain. We were passing a small sheet of water which guards the thirteenth
+green on the golf course. It is a stagnant and unclean pool, but we make
+rather a fuss of it. We call it the pond; and if you play a ball into it
+you send a blasphemous caddie in after it and count one stroke.
+
+A young moon was struggling up over the trees, dismally illuminating
+the scene. On the slimy shores of the pond we beheld a small moving
+object.
+
+A yard behind it was another object, a little smaller, moving at exactly
+the same pace. One of the objects was emitting sounds of distress.
+
+Abandoning my quaking consort I advanced to the edge of the pond and
+leaned down to investigate the mystery.
+
+The leading object proved to be a small, wet, shivering, whimpering
+puppy. The satellite was a brick. The two were connected by a string.
+The puppy had just emerged from the depths of the pond, towing the brick
+behind it.
+
+"What is it, dear?" repeated Stella fearfully.
+
+"Your dog!" I replied, and cut the string.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+WE spent three days deciding on a name for him. Stella suggested
+Tiny, on account of his size. I pointed out that time might stultify
+this selection of a title.
+
+"I don't think so," said Eileen, supporting her sister. "That kind of
+dog does not grow very big."
+
+"What kind of dog is he?" I inquired swiftly.
+
+Eileen said no more. There are problems that even girls of twenty cannot
+solve.
+
+A warm bath had revealed to us the fact that the puppy was of a dingy
+yellow hue. I suggested that we should call him Mustard. Our son John,
+on being consulted--against my advice--by his mother, addressed the
+animal as Pussy. Stella continued to favor Tiny. Finally Eileen, who was
+at the romantic age, produced a copy of Tennyson and suggested
+Excalibur, alleging in support of her preposterous proposition that
+
+          It rose from out the bosom of the lake.
+
+"The darling rose from out the bosom of the lake, too, just like the
+sword Excalibur," she said; "so I think it would make a lovely name for
+him."
+
+"The little brute waded out of a muddy pond towing a brick," I replied.
+"I see no parallel. He was not the product of the pond. Some one must
+have thrown him in, and he came out."
+
+"That is just what some one must have done with the sword," retorted
+Eileen. "So we'll call you Excalibur, won't we, darling little Scally?"
+
+She embraced the puppy warmly and the unsuspecting animal replied by
+frantically licking her face.
+
+However, the name stuck, with variations. When the puppy was big enough
+he was presented with a collar, engraved with the name Excalibur,
+together with my name and address. Among ourselves we usually addressed
+him as Scally. The children in the village called him the Scalawag.
+
+His time during his first year in our household was fully occupied in
+growing up. Stella declared that if one could have persuaded him to
+stand still for five minutes it would have been actually possible to
+see him grow. He grew at the rate of about an inch a week for the best
+part of a year. When he had finished he looked like nothing on earth. At
+one time we cherished a brief but illusory hope that he was going to
+turn into some sort of an imitation of a St. Bernard; but the symptoms
+rapidly passed off, and his final and permanent aspect was that of a
+rather badly stuffed lion.
+
+Like most overgrown creatures he was top-heavy and lethargic and very
+humble-minded. Still, there was a kind of respectful pertinacity about
+him. It requires some strength of character, for instance, to wade along
+the bottom of a pond to dry land, accompanied by a brick as big as
+yourself. It was quite impossible, too, short of locking him up, to
+prevent him from accompanying us when we took our walks abroad, if he
+had made up his mind to do so.
+
+The first time this happened I was going to shoot with my neighbors, the
+Hoods. It was only a mile to the first covert and I set off after
+breakfast to walk. I was hardly out on the road when Excalibur was
+beside me, ambling uncertainly on his weedy legs and smiling up into my
+face with an air of imbecile affection.
+
+"You have many qualities, old friend," I said, "but I don't think you
+are a sporting dog. Go home!"
+
+Excalibur sat down on the road with a dejected air. Then, having given
+me fifty yards start, he rose and crawled sheepishly after me. I
+stopped, called him up, pointed him with some difficulty in the
+required direction, gave him a resounding spank and bade him begone. He
+responded by collapsing like a camp bedstead, and I left him.
+
+Two minutes later I looked round. Excalibur was ten yards behind me,
+propelling himself along on his stomach. This time I thrashed him
+severely. After he began to howl I let him go, and he lumbered away
+homeward, the picture of misery.
+
+In due course I reached the crossroads where I had arranged to meet the
+rest of the party. They had not arrived, but Excalibur had. He had made
+a detour and headed me off. Not certain which route I would take after
+reaching the crossroads, he was sitting very sensibly under the
+signpost, awaiting my arrival. On seeing me he immediately came
+forward, wagging his tail, and placed himself at my feet in the position
+most convenient to me for inflicting chastisement.
+
+I wonder how many of our human friends would be willing to pay such a
+price for the pleasure of our company.
+
+As time went on Excalibur filled out into one of the most terrifying
+spectacles I have ever beheld. In one respect, though, he lived up to
+his knightly name. His manners were of the most courtly description and
+he had an affectionate greeting for all, beggars included. He was
+particularly fond of children. If he saw children in the distance he
+would canter up and offer to play with them. If the children had not met
+him before they would run shrieking to their nurses. If they had they
+would fall on Excalibur in a body and roll him over and pull him about.
+
+On wet afternoons, in the nursery, my own family used to play at dentist
+with him, assigning to Excalibur the role of patient. Gas was
+administered with a bicycle pump, and a shoehorn and buttonhook were
+employed in place of the ordinary instruments of torture; but Excalibur
+did not mind. He lay on his back on the hearth rug, with the principal
+dentist sitting astride his ribs, as happy as a king.
+
+He was particularly attracted by babies; and being able by reason of his
+stature to look right down into perambulators, he was accustomed
+whenever he met one of those vehicles to amble alongside and peer
+inquiringly into the face of its occupant. Most of the babies in the
+district got to know him in time, but until they did we had a good deal
+of correspondence to attend to on the subject.
+
+Excalibur's intellect may have been lofty, but his memory was
+treacherous. Our household will never forget the day on which he was
+given the shoulder of mutton.
+
+One morning after breakfast Eileen, accompanied by Excalibur,
+intercepted the kitchen maid hastening in the direction of the potting
+shed, carrying the joint in question at arm's length. The damsel
+explained that its premature maturity was due to the recent warm weather
+and that she was even now in search of the gardener's boy, who would be
+commissioned to perform the duties of sexton.
+
+"It seems a waste, miss," observed the kitchen maid; "but cook says it
+can't be ate nohow now."
+
+Loud but respectful snuffings from Excalibur moved a direct negative to
+this statement. Eileen and the kitchen maid, who were both criminally
+weak where Excalibur was concerned, saw a way to gratify their
+economical instincts and their natural affection simultaneously. The
+next moment Excalibur was lurching contentedly down the gravel path with
+a presentation shoulder of mutton in his mouth.
+
+Then Joy Day began. Excalibur took his prize into the middle of the
+tennis lawn. It was a very large shoulder of mutton, but Excalibur
+finished it in ten minutes. After that, distended to his utmost limits,
+he went to sleep in the sun, with the bone between his paws.
+Occasionally he woke up and, raising his head, stared solemnly into
+space, in the attitude of a Trafalgar Square lion.
+
+The bone now lay white and gleaming on the grass beside him. Then he
+fell asleep again. About four o'clock he roused himself and began to
+look for a suitable place of interment for the bone. By four-thirty the
+deed was done and he went to sleep once more. At five he woke up and
+pandemonium began. He could not remember where he had buried the bone!
+
+He started systematically with the rose beds, but met with no success.
+After that he tried two or three shrubberies without avail, and then
+embarked on a frantic but thorough excavation of the tennis lawn. We
+were taking tea on the lawn at the time, and our attention was first
+drawn to Excalibur's bereavement by a temporary but unshakable
+conviction on his part that the bone was buried immediately underneath
+the tea table.
+
+As the tennis lawn was fast beginning to resemble a golf course we
+locked Excalibur up in the washhouse, where his hyena-like howls rent
+the air for the rest of the evening, penetrating even to the
+dining-room. This was particularly unfortunate, because we were having a
+dinner party in honor of a neighbor who had recently come to the
+district, no less a personage, in fact, than the new lord-lieutenant of
+the county and his lady. Stella was naturally anxious that there should
+be no embarrassments on such an occasion, and it distressed her to think
+that these people should imagine that we kept a private torture chamber
+on the premises.
+
+However, dinner passed off quite successfully and we adjourned to the
+drawing-room. It was a chilly September evening and Lady Wickham was
+accommodated with a seat by the fire in a large armchair, with a cushion
+at her back. When the gentlemen came in Eileen sang to us. Fortunately
+the drawing-room is out of range of the washhouse.
+
+During Eileen's first song I sat by Lady Wickham. Her expression was one
+of patrician calm and well-bred repose, but it seemed to me she was not
+looking quite comfortable. I was not feeling quite comfortable myself.
+The atmosphere seemed a trifle oppressive: perhaps we had done wrong in
+having a fire after all. Lady Wickham appeared to notice it too. She sat
+very upright, fanning herself mechanically, and seemed disinclined to
+lean back in her chair.
+
+After the song was finished I said:
+
+"I am afraid you are not quite comfortable, Lady Wickham. Let me get you
+a larger cushion."
+
+"Thank you," said Lady Wickham, "the cushion I have is delightfully
+comfortable; but I think there is something hard behind it."
+
+Apologetically I plucked away the cushion. Lady Wickham was right; there
+was something behind it.
+
+It was Excalibur's bone!
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+A WALK along the village street was always a great event for
+Excalibur. Still, it must have contained many humiliating moments for
+one of his sensitive disposition; for he was always pathetically anxious
+to make friends with other dogs, but was rarely successful. Little dogs
+merely bit his legs and big dogs cut him dead.
+
+I think this was why he usually commenced his morning round by calling
+on a rabbit. The rabbit lived in a hutch in a yard at the end of a
+passage between two cottages, the first turning on the right after you
+entered the village, and Excalibur always dived down this at the
+earliest opportunity. It was no use for Eileen, who usually took him
+out on these occasions, to endeavor to hold him back. Either Excalibur
+called on the rabbit by himself or Eileen went with him; there was no
+other alternative.
+
+Arrived at the hutch, Excalibur wagged his tail and contemplated the
+rabbit with his usual air of vacuous benevolence. The rabbit made not
+the faintest response, but continued to munch green feed, twitching its
+nose in a superior manner. Finally, when it could endure Excalibur's
+admiring inspection and hard breathing no longer, it turned its back and
+retired into its bedroom.
+
+Excalibur's next call was usually at the butcher's shop, where he was
+presented with a specially selected and quite unsalable fragment of
+meat. He then crossed the road to the baker's, where he purchased a
+halfpenny bun, for which his escort was expected to pay. After that he
+walked from shop to shop, wherever he was taken, with great docility and
+enjoyment; for he was a gregarious animal and had a friend behind or
+underneath almost every counter in the village. Men, women, babies,
+kittens, even ducks--they were all one to him.
+
+At one time Eileen had endeavored to teach him a few simple
+accomplishments, such as begging for food, dying for his country, and
+carrying parcels. She was unsuccessful in all three instances. Excalibur
+on his hind legs stood about five feet six, and when he fell from that
+eminence, as he invariably did when he tried to beg, he usually broke
+something. He was hampered, too, by inability to distinguish one order
+from another. More than once he narrowly escaped with his life through
+mistaking an urgent appeal to come to heel out of the way of an
+approaching automobile for a command to die for his country in the
+middle of the road.
+
+As for educating him to carry parcels, a single attempt was sufficient.
+The parcel in question contained a miscellaneous assortment of articles
+from the grocer's, including lard, soap, and safety matches. It was
+securely tied up, and the grocer kindly attached it by a short length of
+string to a wooden clothespin, in order to make it easier for Excalibur
+to carry. They set off home.
+
+Excalibur was most apologetic about it afterward, besides being
+extremely unwell; but he had no idea, he explained to Eileen, that
+anything put into his mouth was not meant to be eaten. He then tendered
+the clothespin and some mangled brown paper, with an air of profound
+abasement. After that no further attempts at compulsory education were
+undertaken.
+
+It was his daily walk with Eileen, however, which introduced Excalibur
+to life--life in its broadest and most romantic sense. As I was not
+privileged to be present at the opening incident of this episode, or at
+most of its subsequent developments, the direct conduct of this
+narrative here passes out of my hands.
+
+One sunny morning in July a young man in clerical attire sat
+breakfasting in his rooms at Mrs. Tice's. Mrs. Tice's establishment was
+situated on the village street and Mrs. Tice was in the habit of letting
+her ground floor to lodgers of impeccable respectability.
+
+It was half-past eleven, which is a late hour for the clergy to
+breakfast; but this young man appeared to be suffering from no qualms of
+conscience on the subject. He was making an excellent breakfast and
+reading the Henley results with a mixture of rapture and longing.
+
+He had just removed the "Sportsman" from the convenient buttress of the
+teapot and substituted "Punch" when he became aware that day had turned
+to night. Looking up he perceived that his open window, which was rather
+small and of the casement variety, was completely blocked by a huge,
+shapeless, and opaque mass. Next moment the mass resolved itself into an
+animal of enormous size and surprising appearance, which fell heavily
+into the room, and
+
+          Like a stream that, spouting from a cliff,
+          Fails in mid-air, but, gathering at the base,
+          Remakes itself,
+
+rose to its feet and, advancing to the table, laid a heavy head on the
+white cloth and lovingly passed its tongue--which resembled that of the
+great anteater--round a cold chicken conveniently adjacent.
+
+Five minutes later the window framed another picture--this time a girl
+of twenty, white-clad and wearing a powder-blue felt hat, caught up on
+one side by a silver buckle which twinkled in the hot morning sun. The
+curate started to his feet. Excalibur, who was now lying on the
+hearthrug dismembering the chicken, thumped his tail guiltily on the
+floor, but made no attempt to rise.
+
+"I am very sorry," said Eileen, "but I am afraid my dog is trespassing.
+May I call him out?"
+
+"Certainly!" said the curate. "But"--he racked his brains to devise some
+means of delaying the departure of this radiant, fragrant vision--"he is
+not the least in the way. I am very glad of his company; it was most
+neighborly of him to call. After all, I suppose he is one of my
+parishioners. And--and"--he blushed--"I hope you are, too."
+
+Eileen gave him her most entrancing smile, and from that hour the curate
+ceased to be his own master.
+
+"I suppose you are Mr. Gilmore," said Eileen.
+
+"Yes. I have been here only three weeks and I have not met every one
+yet."
+
+"I have been away for two months," Eileen mentioned.
+
+"I thought you must have been," said the curate, rather subtly for him.
+
+"I think my brother-in-law called on you a few days ago," continued
+Eileen, on whom the curate's last remark had made a most favorable
+impression. She mentioned my name.
+
+"I was going to return the call this very afternoon," said the curate.
+And he firmly believed that he was speaking the truth. "Won't you come
+in? We have an excellent chaperon," indicating Excalibur. "I will come
+and open the door."
+
+"Well, he certainly won't come out unless I come and fetch him,"
+admitted Eileen thoughtfully.
+
+A moment later the curate was at the front door and led his visitor
+across the little hall into the sitting-room. He had not been absent
+more than thirty seconds, but during that time a plateful of sausages
+had mysteriously disappeared; and, as they entered, Excalibur was
+apologetically settling down on the hearthrug with a cottage loaf
+between his paws.
+
+Eileen uttered cries of dismay and apology, but the curate would have
+none of them.
+
+"My fault entirely!" he insisted. "I have no right to be breakfasting at
+this hour; but this is my day off. You see I take early Service every
+morning at seven; but on Wednesdays we cut it out--omit it and have
+full Matins at ten. So I get up at half-past nine, take Service at ten,
+and come back to my rooms at eleven and have breakfast. It is my weekly
+treat."
+
+"You deserve it," said Eileen feelingly. Her religious exercises were
+limited to going to church on Sunday morning and coming out, if
+possible, after the Litany. "And how do you like Much Moreham?"
+
+"I did not like it at all when I came," said the curate, "but recently I
+have begun to enjoy myself immensely." He did not say how recently.
+
+"Were you in London before?"
+
+"Yes--in the East End. It was pretty hard work, but a useful experience.
+I feel rather lost here during my spare time. I get so little exercise.
+In London I used to slip away for an occasional outing in a Leander
+scratch eight, and that kept me fit. I am inclined," he added ruefully,
+"to put on flesh."
+
+"Leander? Are you a Blue?"
+
+The curate nodded.
+
+"You know about rowing, I see," he said appreciatively. "The worst of
+rowing," he continued, "is that it takes up so much of a man's time that
+he has no opportunity of practicing anything else--cricket, for
+instance. All curates ought to be able to play cricket. I do my best;
+but there isn't a single boy in the Sunday School who can't bowl me.
+It's humiliating!"
+
+"Do you play tennis at all?" asked Eileen.
+
+"Yes, in a way."
+
+"I am sure my sister will be pleased if you come and have a game with us
+some afternoon."
+
+The enraptured curate had already opened his mouth to accept this demure
+invitation when Excalibur, rising from the hearthrug, stretched himself
+luxuriously and wagged his tail, thereby removing three pipes, an
+inkstand, a tobacco jar, and a half-completed sermon from the writing
+table.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+EXCALIBUR was heavily overworked in his new role of chaperon during
+the next three or four weeks, and any dog less ready to oblige than
+himself might have felt a little aggrieved at the treatment to which he
+was subjected.
+
+There was the case of the tennis lawn, for instance. He had always
+regarded this as his own particular sanctuary, dedicated to reflection
+and repose; but now the net was stretched across it and Eileen and the
+curate performed antics all over the court with rackets and small white
+balls which, though they did not hurt Excalibur, kept him awake. It did
+not occur to him to convey himself elsewhere, for his mind moved
+slowly; and the united blandishments of the players failed to bring the
+desirability of such a course home to him. He continued to lie in his
+favorite spot on the sunny side of the court, looking injured but
+forgiving, or slumbering perseveringly amid the storm that raged round
+him.
+
+It was quite impossible to move Excalibur once he had decided to remain
+where he was; so Eileen and the curate agreed to regard him as a sort of
+artificial excrescence, like the buttress in a fives court. If the ball
+hit him, as it frequently did, the player waiting for it was at liberty
+either to play it or claim a let. This arrangement added a piquant and
+pleasing variety to what is too often--especially when indulged in by
+mediocre players--a very dull game.
+
+Worse was to follow, however. One day Eileen and the curate conducted
+Excalibur to a neighboring mountain range--at least, so it appeared to
+Excalibur--and played another ball game. This time they employed long
+sticks with iron heads, and two balls, which, though they were much
+smaller than tennis balls, were incredibly hard and painful. Excalibur,
+though willing to help and anxious to please, could not supervise both
+the balls at once. As sure as he ran to retrieve one the other came
+after him and took him unfairly in the rear. Excalibur was the gentlest
+of creatures, but the most perfect gentleman has his dignity to
+consider.
+
+After having been struck for the third time by one of these balls he
+whipped round, picked it up in his mouth and gave it a tiny pinch, just
+as a warning. At least, he thought it was a tiny pinch. The ball
+retaliated with unexpected ferocity. It twisted and turned. It emitted
+long, snaky spirals of some elastic substance, which clogged his teeth
+and tickled his throat and wound themselves round his tongue and nearly
+choked him. Panic-stricken, he ran to his mistress, who, with weeping
+and with laughter, removed the writhing horror from his jaws and
+comforted him with fair words.
+
+After that Excalibur realized that it is wiser to walk behind golfers
+than in front of them. It was a boring business, though, and very
+exhausting, for he loathed exercise of every kind; and his only periods
+of repose were the occasions on which the expedition came to a halt on
+certain small, flat lawns, each of which contained a hole with a flag in
+it.
+
+Here Excalibur would lie down, with the contented sigh of a tired child,
+and go to sleep. As he almost invariably lay down between the hole and
+the ball, the players agreed to regard him as a bunker. Eileen putted
+round him; but the curate--who had little regard for the humbler works
+of creation, Excalibur thought--used to take his mashie and attempt a
+lofting shot, an enterprise in which he almost invariably failed, to
+Excalibur's great inconvenience.
+
+Country walks were more tolerable, for Eileen's supervision of his
+movements, which was usually marked by an officious severity, was
+sensibly relaxed on these days and Excalibur found himself at liberty to
+range abroad amid the heath and through the coppices, engaged in a
+pastime that he imagined was hunting.
+
+One hot afternoon, wandering into a clearing, he encountered a hare. The
+hare, which was suffering from extreme panic, owing to a terrifying
+noise behind it,--the blast of the newest and most vulgar motor horn, to
+be precise,--was bolting right across the clearing. After the manner of
+hares where objects directly in front of them are concerned, the
+fugitive entirely failed to perceive Excalibur and, indeed, ran right
+underneath him on its way to cover. Excalibur was so unstrung by this
+adventure that he ran back to where he had left Eileen and the curate.
+
+They were sitting side by side on the grass and the curate was holding
+Eileen's hand.
+
+Excalibur advanced on them thankfully and indicated by an ingratiating
+smile that a friendly remark or other recognition of his presence would
+be gratefully received; but neither took the slightest notice of him.
+They continued to gaze straight before them in a mournful and abstracted
+fashion. They looked not so much at Excalibur as through him. First the
+hare, then Eileen and the curate! Excalibur began to fear that he had
+become invisible, or at least transparent. Greatly agitated he drifted
+away into a neighboring plantation full of young pheasants. Here he
+encountered a keeper, who was able to dissipate his gloomy suspicions
+for him without any difficulty whatsoever. But Eileen and the curate sat
+on.
+
+"A hundred pounds a year!" repeated the curate. "A pass degree and no
+influence! I can't preach and I have no money of my own. Dearest, I
+ought never to have told you."
+
+"Told me what?" inquired Eileen softly. She knew quite well; but she was
+a woman, and a woman can never let well enough alone.
+
+The curate, turning to Eileen, delivered himself of a statement of three
+words. Eileen's reply was a softly whispered _Tu quoque!_
+
+"It had to happen, dear," she added cheerfully, for she did not share
+the curate's burden of responsibility in the matter. "If you had not
+told me we should have been miserable separately. Now that you have told
+me, we can be miserable together. And when two people who--who--" She
+hesitated.
+
+The curate supplied the relative sentence. Eileen nodded her head in
+acknowledgment.
+
+"Yes; who are--like you and me--are miserable together, they are happy!
+See?"
+
+"I see," said the curate gravely. "Yes, you are right there; but we
+can't go on living on a diet of joint misery. We shall have to face the
+future. What are we going to do about it?"
+
+Then Eileen spoke up boldly for the first time.
+
+"Gerald," she said, "we shall simply have to manage on a hundred a
+year."
+
+But the curate shook his head.
+
+"Dearest, I should be an utter cad if I allowed you to do such a thing,"
+he said. "A hundred a year is less than two pounds a week!"
+
+"A lot of people live on less than two pounds a week," Eileen pointed
+out longingly.
+
+"Yes; I know. If we could rent a three-shilling cottage and I could go
+about with a spotted handkerchief round my neck, and you could scrub the
+doorsteps _coram populo_, we might be very comfortable; but the clergy
+belong to the black-coated class, and people in the lower ranks of the
+black-coated class are the poorest people in the whole wide world. They
+have to spend money on luxuries--collars and charwomen, and so
+on--which a workingman can spend entirely on necessities. It wouldn't
+merely mean no pretty dresses and a lot of hard work for you, Eileen. It
+would mean starvation! Believe me--I know! Some of my friends have tried
+it--and I know!"
+
+"What happened to them?" asked Eileen fearfully.
+
+"They all had to come down in the end--some soon, some late, but all in
+time--to taking parish relief."
+
+"Parish relief?"
+
+"Yes; not official, regulation, rate-aided charity, but the infinitely
+more humiliating charity of their well-to-do neighbors--quiet checks,
+second-hand dresses, and things like that. No, little girl; you and I
+are too proud--too proud of the cloth--for that. We will never give a
+handle to the people who are always waiting to have a fling at the
+improvident clergy--not if it breaks our hearts, we won't!"
+
+"You are quite right, dear," said Eileen quietly. "We must wait."
+
+Then the curate said the most difficult thing he had said yet:--
+
+"I shall have to go away from here."
+
+Eileen's hand turned cold in his.
+
+"Why?" she whispered; but she knew.
+
+"Because if we wait here we shall wait forever. The last curate in Much
+Moreham--what happened to him?"
+
+"He died."
+
+"Yes--at fifty-five; and he had been here for thirty years. Preferment
+does not come in sleepy villages. I must go back to London."
+
+"The East End?"
+
+"East or south or north--it doesn't signify. Anywhere but west. In the
+east and south and north there is always work to be done--hard work. And
+if a parson has no money and no brains and no influence, and can only
+work--run clothing clubs and soup kitchens, and reclaim
+drunkards--London is the place for him. So off I go to London, my
+beloved, to lay the foundations of Paradise for you and me--for you and
+me!"
+
+There was a long silence. Then the pair rose to their feet and smiled on
+each other extremely cheerfully, because each suspected the
+other--rightly--of low spirits.
+
+"Shall we tell people?" asked the curate.
+
+Eileen thought, and shook her head.
+
+"No," she said; "nicer not. It will make a splendid secret."
+
+"Just between us two, eh?" said the curate, kindling at the thought.
+
+"Just between us two," agreed Eileen. And the curate kissed her very
+solemnly. A secret is a comfortable thing to lovers, especially when
+they are young and about to be lonely.
+
+At this moment a leonine head, supported on a lumbering and ill-balanced
+body, was thrust in between them. It was Excalibur, taking sanctuary
+with the Church from the vengeance of the Law.
+
+"We might tell Scally, I think," said Eileen.
+
+"Rather!" assented the curate. "He introduced us."
+
+So Eileen communicated the great news to Excalibur.
+
+"You do approve, dear--don't you?" she said.
+
+Excalibur, instinctively realizing that this was an occasion when
+liberties might be taken, stood up on his hind legs and placed his
+forepaws on his mistress's shoulders. The curate supported them both.
+
+"And you will use your influence to get us a living wage from
+somewhere--won't you, old man?" added the curate.
+
+Excalibur tried to lick both their faces at once--and succeeded.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+SO the curate went away, but not to London. He was sent instead to a
+great manufacturing town in the north, where the work was equally hard,
+and where Anglican and Roman and Salvationist fought grimly side by side
+against the powers of drink and disease and crime. During these days,
+which ultimately rolled into years, the curate lost his boyish freshness
+and his unfortunate tendency to put on flesh. He grew thin and lathy;
+and, though his smile was as ready and as magnetic as ever, he seldom
+laughed.
+
+He never failed, however, to write a cheerful letter to Eileen every
+Monday morning. He was getting a hundred and twenty pounds a year now;
+so his chances of becoming a millionaire had increased by twenty per
+cent.
+
+Meantime his two confederates, Excalibur and Eileen, continued to reside
+at Much Moreham. Eileen was still the recognized beauty of the district,
+but she spread her net less promiscuously than of yore. Girl friends she
+always had in plenty, but it was noticed that she avoided intimacy with
+all eligible males of over twenty and under forty-five years of age. No
+one knew the reason for this except Excalibur. Eileen used to read
+Gerald's letters aloud to him every Tuesday morning; sometimes the
+letter contained a friendly message to Excalibur himself.
+
+In acknowledgment of this courtesy Excalibur always sent his love to
+the curate--Eileen wrote every Friday--and he and Eileen walked
+together, rain or shine, on Friday afternoons to post the letter in the
+next village. Much Moreham's post office was too small to remain
+oblivious to such a regular correspondence.
+
+The curate was seen no more in his old parish. Railroad journeys are
+costly things and curates' holidays rare. Besides, he had no overt
+excuse for coming. And so life went on for five years. The curate and
+Eileen may have met during that period, for Eileen sometimes went away
+visiting. As Excalibur was not privileged to accompany her on these
+occasions he had no means of checking her movements; but the chances are
+that she never saw the curate, or I think she would have told Excalibur
+about it. We simply have to tell some one.
+
+Then, quite suddenly, came a tremendous change in Excalibur's life.
+Eileen's brother-in-law--he was Excalibur's master no longer, for
+Excalibur had been transferred to Eileen by deed of gift, at her own
+request, on her first birthday after the curate's departure--fell ill.
+There was an operation and a crisis, and a deal of unhappiness at Much
+Moreham; then came convalescence, followed by directions for a sea
+voyage of six months. It was arranged that the house should be shut up
+and the children sent to their grandmother at Bath.
+
+"That settles everything and everybody," said the gaunt man on the
+sofa, "except you, Eileen? What about you?"
+
+"What about Scally?" inquired Eileen.
+
+Her brother-in-law apologetically admitted that he had forgotten Scally.
+
+"Not quite myself at present," he mentioned in extenuation.
+
+"I am going to Aunt Phoebe," announced Eileen.
+
+"You are never going to introduce Scally into Aunt Phoebe's
+establishment!" cried Eileen's sister.
+
+"No," said Eileen, "I am not." She rubbed Excalibur's matted head
+affectionately. "But I have arranged for the dear man's future. He is
+going to visit friends in the north. Aren't you, darling?"
+
+Excalibur, to whom this arrangement had been privately communicated
+some days before, wagged his tail and endeavored to look as intelligent
+and knowing as possible. He was not going to put his beloved mistress to
+shame by admitting to her relatives that he had not the faintest idea
+what she was talking about.
+
+However, he was soon to understand. The next day Eileen took him up to
+London by train. This in itself was a tremendous adventure, though
+alarming at first. He traveled in the guard's van, it having been found
+quite impossible to get him into an ordinary compartment--or, rather, to
+get any one else into the compartment after he lay down on the floor. So
+he traveled with the guard, chained to the vacuum brake, and shared that
+kindly official's dinner.
+
+When they reached the terminus there was much bustle and confusion. The
+door of the van was thrown open and porters dragged out the luggage and
+submitted samples thereof to overheated passengers, who invariably
+failed to recognize their own property and claimed someone else's.
+
+Finally, when the luggage was all cleared out, the guard took off
+Excalibur's chain and facetiously invited him to alight for London Town.
+Excalibur, lumbering delicately across the ribbed floor of the van,
+arrived at the open doorway. Outside on the platform he espied Eileen.
+Beside her stood a tall figure in black.
+
+With one tremendous roar of rapturous recognition, Excalibur leaped
+straight out of the van and launched himself fairly and squarely at the
+curate's chest. Luckily the curate saw him coming.
+
+"He knows you, all right," said Eileen with satisfaction.
+
+"He appears to," replied the curate. "Afraid I don't dance the tango,
+Scally, old man; but thanks for the invitation, all the same!"
+
+Excalibur spent the rest of the day in London, where it must be admitted
+he caused a genuine sensation--no mean feat in such a blase place.
+
+In Bond Street the traffic had to be held up both ways by benevolent
+policemen, because Excalibur, feeling pleasantly tired, lay down to
+rest.
+
+When evening came they all dined together in a cheap little restaurant
+in Soho and were very gay, with the gayety of people who are whistling
+to keep their courage up. After dinner Eileen said good-bye, first to
+Excalibur and then to the curate. She was much more demonstrative toward
+the former than toward the latter, which is the way of women.
+
+Then the curate put Eileen into a taxi and, having with the aid of the
+commissionaire extracted Excalibur from underneath--he had gone there
+under some confused impression that it was the guard's van again--said
+good-bye for the last time; and Eileen, smiling bravely, was whirled
+away out of sight.
+
+As the taxi turned a distant corner and disappeared from view, it
+suddenly occurred to Excalibur that he had been left behind. Accordingly
+he set off in pursuit.
+
+The curate finally ran him to earth in Buckingham Palace Road, which is
+a long chase from Soho, where he was sitting on the pavement, to the
+grave inconvenience of the inhabitants of Pimlico, and refusing to be
+comforted. It took his new master the best part of an hour to get him to
+Euston Road, where it was discovered they had missed the night mail to
+the north. Accordingly they walked to a rival station and took another
+train.
+
+In all this Excalibur was the instrument of Destiny, as you shall hear.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+THE coroner's jury was inclined at the time to blame the signalman,
+but the Board of Trade inquiry established the fact that the accident
+was due to the engine-driver's neglect to keep a proper lookout.
+However, as the driver was dead and his fireman with him, the law very
+leniently took no further action in the matter.
+
+About three o'clock in the morning, as the train was crossing a bleak
+Yorkshire moor seven miles from Tetley Junction, the curate suddenly
+left the seat on which he lay stretched dreaming of Eileen and flew
+across the compartment on to the recumbent form of a stout commercial
+traveler. Then he rebounded to the floor and woke up--unhurt.
+
+"'Tis an accident, lad!" gasped the commercial traveler as he got his
+wind.
+
+"So it seems," said the curate. "Hold tight! She's rocking!"
+
+The commercial traveler, who was mechanically groping under the seat for
+his boots,--commercial travelers always remove their boots in
+third-class railroad compartments when on night journeys,--followed the
+curate's advice and braced himself with his feet against the opposite
+seat for the coming _bouleversement_.
+
+After the first shock the train had gathered way again--the light engine
+into which it had charged had been thrown clear off the track--but only
+for a moment. Suddenly the reeling engine of the express left the rails
+and staggered drunkenly along the ballast. A moment later it turned
+over, taking the guard's van and the first four coaches with it, and the
+whole train came to a standstill.
+
+It was a corridor train, and unfortunately for Gerald Gilmore and the
+commercial traveler their coach fell over corridor side downward. There
+was no door on the other side of the compartment--only three windows,
+crossed by a stout brass bar. These windows had suddenly become
+sky-lights.
+
+They fought their way out at last. Once he got the window open, the
+curate experienced little difficulty in getting through; but the
+commercial traveler was corpulent and tenacious of his boots, which he
+held persistently in one hand while Gerald tugged at the other. Still,
+he was hauled up at last, and the two slid down the perpendicular roof
+of the coach to the permanent way.
+
+"That's done, anyway!" panted the drummer; and sitting down he began to
+put on his boots.
+
+"There's plenty more to do," said the curate grimly, pulling off his
+coat. "The front of the train is on fire. Come!"
+
+He turned and ran. Almost at his first step he cannoned into a heavy
+body in rapid motion. It was Excalibur.
+
+"That you, old friend?" observed the curate. "I was on my way to see
+about you. Now that you are out, you may as well come and bear a hand."
+
+The pair sprinted along the line toward the blazing coaches.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was dawn--gray, weeping, and cheerless--on Tetley Moor. Another
+engine had come up from behind to take what was left of the train back
+to the Junction. Seven coaches, including the lordly sleeping saloon,
+stood intact; four, with the engine and tender, lay where they had
+fallen, a mass of charred wood and twisted metal.
+
+A motor car belonging to a doctor stood in the roadway a hundred yards
+off, and its owner, with a brother of the craft who had been a passenger
+on the train, was attending to the injured. There were fourteen of these
+altogether, mostly suffering from burns. These were made as comfortable
+as possible in sleeping berths their owners had vacated.
+
+"Take your seats, please!" said the surviving guard in a subdued voice.
+He spoke at the direction of a big man in a heavy overcoat, who appeared
+to have taken charge of the salvage operations. The passengers clambered
+up into the train.
+
+Only one hesitated. He was a long, lean young man, black from head to
+foot with soot and oil. His left arm was badly burned; and seeing a
+doctor disengaged at last, he came forward to have it dressed.
+
+The big man in the heavy overcoat approached him.
+
+"My name is Caversham," he said. "I happen to be a director of the
+company. If you will give me your name and address I will see to it
+that your services to-night are suitably recognized. The way you got
+those two children out of the first coach was splendid, if I may be
+allowed to say so. We did not even know they were there."
+
+The young man's teeth suddenly flashed out into a white smile against
+the blackness of his face.
+
+"Neither did I, sir," he said. "Let me introduce you to the responsible
+party."
+
+He whistled. Out of the gray dawn loomed an eerie monster, badly singed,
+wagging its tail.
+
+"Scally, old man," said the curate, "this gentleman wants to present you
+with an illuminated address. Thank him prettily!" Then, to the doctor:
+"I'm ever so much obliged to you; it's quite comfortable now."
+
+He began stiffly to pull on his coat and waistcoat. Lord Caversham,
+lending a hand, noted the waistcoat and said quickly:--
+
+"Will you travel in my compartment? I should like to have a word with
+you if I may."
+
+"I think I had better go and have a look at those poor folks in the
+sleeper first," replied the curate. "They may require my services
+professionally."
+
+"At the Junction, then, perhaps?" suggested Lord Caversham.
+
+At the Junction, however, the curate found a special waiting to proceed
+north by a loop line; and, being in no mind to receive compliments or
+waste his substance on a hotel, he departed forthwith, taking his
+charred confederate, Excalibur, with him.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+Fortune, once she takes a fancy to you, is not readily shaken off,
+however, as most successful men are always trying to forget. A fortnight
+later Lord Caversham, leaving his hotel in a great northern town,
+encountered an acquaintance he had no difficulty whatever in
+recognizing.
+
+It was Excalibur, jammed fast between two stationary tramcars--he had
+not yet shaken down to town life--submitting to a painful but effective
+process of extraction at the hands of a posse of policemen and tram
+conductors, shrilly directed by a small but commanding girl of the
+lodging-house-drudge variety.
+
+When this enterprise had been brought to a successful conclusion and
+the congested traffic moved on by the overheated policemen, Lord
+Caversham crossed the street and tapped the damsel on the shoulder.
+
+"Can you kindly inform me where the owner of that dog may be found?" he
+inquired politely.
+
+"Yas. Se'nty-one Pilgrim Street. But 'e won't sell him."
+
+"Should I be likely to find him at home if I called now?"
+
+"Yas. Bin in bed since the accident. Got a nasty arm."
+
+"Perhaps you would not mind accompanying me back to Pilgrim Street in my
+car?"
+
+After that Mary Ellen's mind became an incoherent blur. A stately
+limousine glided up; Mary Ellen was handed in by a footman and
+Excalibur was stuffed in after her in installments. The grand gentleman
+entered by the opposite door and sat down beside her; but Mary Ellen was
+much too dazed to converse with him.
+
+The arrival of the equipage in Pilgrim Street was the greatest moment of
+Mary Ellen's life.
+
+Meantime upstairs in the first-floor front the curate, lying in his
+uncomfortable flock bed, was saying:--
+
+"If you really mean it, sir--"
+
+"I do mean it. If those two children had been burned to death unnoticed
+I should never have forgiven myself, and the public would never have
+forgiven the company."
+
+"Well, sir, since you say that, you--well, you could do me a service.
+Could you possibly use your influence to get me a billet--I'm not
+asking for an incumbency; any old curacy would do--a billet I could
+marry on?" He flushed scarlet. "I--we have been waiting a long time
+now."
+
+There was a long silence, and the curate wondered whether he had been
+too mercenary in his request. Then Lord Caversham asked:--
+
+"What are you getting at present?"
+
+"A hundred and twenty a year."
+
+This was about two thirds of the salary Lord Caversham paid his
+chauffeur. He asked another question in his curious, abrupt staccato
+manner:--
+
+"How much do you want?"
+
+"We could make both ends meet on two hundred; but another fifty would
+enable me to make her a lot more comfortable," said the curate
+wistfully.
+
+The great man surveyed him silently--wonderingly, too, if the curate had
+known. Presently he asked:
+
+"Afraid of hard work?"
+
+"No work is hard to a man with a wife and a home of his own," replied
+the curate with simple fervor.
+
+Lord Caversham smiled grimly. He had more homes of his own than he could
+conveniently live in, and he had been married three times; but even he
+found work hard now and then.
+
+"I wonder!" he said. "Well, good-afternoon. I should like to be
+introduced to your fiancee some day."
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+A TRAMP opened the rectory gate and shambled up the neat gravel walk
+toward the house. Taking a short cut through the shrubbery he emerged
+suddenly on a little lawn.
+
+On the lawn a lady was sitting in a basket chair beside a perambulator,
+the occupant of which was slumbering peacefully. A small but intensely
+capable nursemaid, prone on the grass in a curvilinear attitude, was
+acting as tunnel to a young gentleman of three who was impersonating a
+locomotive.
+
+The tramp approached the group and asked huskily for alms. He was a
+burly and unpleasant specimen of his class--a class all too numerous on
+the outskirts of the great industrial parish of Smeltingborough. The
+lady in the basket chair looked up.
+
+"The rector is out," she said. "If you go into the town you will find
+him at the Church Hall and he will investigate your case."
+
+"Oh, the rector is out, is he?" repeated the tramp in tones of distinct
+satisfaction.
+
+"Yes," said Eileen.
+
+The tramp advanced another pace.
+
+"Give us half a crown!" he said. "I haven't had a bite of food since
+yesterday, lady--nor a drink neither," he added humorously.
+
+"Please go away!" said the lady. "You know where to find the rector."
+
+The tramp smiled unpleasantly, but made no attempt to move.
+
+"You refuse to go away?" the lady said.
+
+"I'll go for half a crown," replied the tramp with the gracious air of
+one anxious to oblige a lady.
+
+"Watch baby for a moment, Mary Ellen," said Eileen.
+
+She rose and disappeared into the house, followed by the gratified smile
+of the tramp. He was a reasonable man and knew that ladies did not wear
+pockets.
+
+"Thirsty weather," he remarked affably.
+
+Mary Ellen, keeping one hand on the shoulder of Master Gerald Caversham
+Gilmore and the other on the edge of the baby's perambulator, merely
+chuckled sardonically.
+
+The next moment there were footsteps round the corner of the house and
+Eileen reappeared. She was clinging with both hands to the collar of an
+enormous dog. Its tongue lolled from its great jaws; its tail waved
+menacingly from side to side; its great limbs were bent as though for a
+spring. Its eyes were half closed as though to focus the exact distance.
+
+"Run!" cried Eileen to the tramp. "I can't hold him in much longer!"
+
+This was true enough, except that when Eileen said "in" she meant "up."
+But the tramp did not linger to discuss grammar. There was a scurry of
+feet, the gate banged and he was gone.
+
+With a sigh of relief Eileen let go of Excalibur's collar. Excalibur
+promptly collapsed on the grass and went to sleep again.
+
+
+
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