about women; and the more he learns about women the better able he will be to make his way in the world. Therefore, if he marries young he reduces his chances of success in life to a minimum. The sad part about it all is that, provided he gets the girl he wants, he doesn't care. That, by the way, is the reason why nearly all the most famous men in history have either been unhappily married or not married at all. Happiness has no history. Happily married men are never ambitious. They don't go toiling and panting after

They have no need to," said Hughie. “A man doesn't go on running after a tram-car after he has caught it."

"That begs the question, Hughie. It presumes that all the available happiness in the world is contained in one particular tram-car. Besides, the tram-cars you mean are intended for men over thirty. The young ought to walk."

Hughie realised that the conversation was growing rather too subtle for him, and reverted to plain cut and thrust. แ Then you think no man should marry before thirty?" he said.

"Nothing of the kind! It depends on the man. If he is If he is a steady, decent, average sort of fellow, who regards a ledger as a Bible and an office-stool as a stepping stone to the summit of the universe, and possesses no particular aptitude for the rough-and-tumble of life, the sooner he marries

and settles down as a contented old pram-pusher the better for him and the nation. Do you fancy yourself in that line, Hughie?"

"No-o-o," said Hughie reluctantly. "But I might learn," he added hopefully. "I'm a pretty adaptable bloke."

Jimmy Marrable threw his cigar-end out of the window, and sat up.

"Listen, Hughie," he said, "and I'll tell you what you really are. You are the son of a mother who climbed out of her bedroom window (and let herself down a rain-pipe that I wouldn't have trusted a monkey on) in order to elope with the man she loved. Your father was the commander of as tough a native regiment as I have ever known. Your grandfather was an explorer. I've been a bit of a rollingstone myself. About one relation of yours in three dies in his bed. You come of a stock which prefers to go and see things for itself rather than read about them in the newspaper, and which has acquired a considerable knowledge of the art of handling men in the process. Those are rather rare assets. If you take a woman in tow at the tender age of twenty-one, there will be a disaster. be a disaster. Either you will sit at home and eat your heart out, or you will go abroad and leave her to eat out hers. Am I talking sense?"

Hughie sighed like a fur

nace.

"Yes, confound you!" he

said.

"Will you promise not to rush into matrimony, then?" "Perhaps she'll wait for me," mused Hughie.

"How old is she?" "Twenty-one, like me.' "H'm,' remarked Jimmy Marrable drily. "That means that she is for all practical purposes ten years your senior. However, perhaps she will. Pigs might fly. But will you promise me to think the matter over very carefully before deciding not to go abroad?" "Yes," said Hughie.

"That being the case," continued his uncle briskly, "I want to tell you one or two things. If you do go, I may never see you again.'

"I say," ," said Hughie in alarm, "there's nothing wrong with your health, is there, old

man?"

"Bless you, no! But once a Marrable takes to the wilds, Methuselah himself couldn't reckon on living long enough to see him again. So I am going to talk to you while I've got you. I am taking this opportunity of being near town to see my solicitor and make my will. I am fit enough, but I am fifty this year; and at that age a man ought to make some disposition of his property. I may as well tell you that I have left you nothing. Annoyed?"

"Not in the least." "And I have left nothing to Master Lance."

Hughie looked a little surprised at this.

"I mean to start him on his own legs before my demise,"

explained Jimmy Marrable. "Immediately, in fact. That is partly what I am going up to town for. I am investing a sum for him which ought to bring him in about two hundred a-year for the rest of his life. He's nearly sixteen now, and he'll have to administer his income himself-pay his own schoolbills and everything. Just as I made you do. Nothing like accustoming a boy to handling money when he's young. Then he doesn't go a mucker when he suddenly comes into a lot of it. I shan't give him more, because it would prevent him from working. Two hundred won't. A slug would perhaps live contentedly enough on it, but Lancelot Wellesley Gaymer is a pretentious young sweep, and he'll work in order to gain the means for making a splash. The two hundred will keep him going till he finds his feet."

Jimmy Marrable paused, and surveyed his nephew rather irritably.

"Well," he inquired at length, "haven't you any contribution to make to this conversation?” "Can't say I have had much chance so far," replied the disrespectful Hughie.

"Don't you want to know what I'm going to do with the rest of my money? That's a question that a good many people are worrying themselves about. Don't you want to join in the inquisition?"

"Can't say I do. No business of mine."

His uncle surveyed him curiously.

or

"Good scheme," said Hughie.
"You think so?"
"Rather!"

"There's a lot of it," continued his uncle reflectively. "Some of it is tied up rather queerly, too. My executors will have a bit of a job."

He surveyed the impassive Hughie again.

"Don't you want to know who my executors are?" he inquired quite angrily.

"No," said Hughie, who was deep in other thoughts at the "Not my business,"

moment.

he repeated.

66

Hughie," said Jimmy Marrable, "you are poor Arthur over again. He was a cursedly irritating chap at times," he added explosively.

A babble of cheerful voices on the staircase announced the return of the safe-looking Mr Lunn and party. They flowed in, entranced with that gentleman's door-knockers (the countenances of which, by the way, were usually compared by undergraduate critics, not at all unfavourably, with that of their owner), and declared themselves quite ready now to be properly impressed by whatever features of the College Hughie should be pleased to exhibit to them.

One tour round a college is very like another; and we need not therefore follow our friends up and down winding staircases, or in and out of chapels and libraries, while they gaze

The expedition was chiefly remarkable (to the observant eye of Mrs Ames) for the efforts made by its conductor to get lost in suitable company -an enterprise which was invariably frustrated by the resolute conduct of that small but determined hero-worshipper, Miss Joan Gaymer. On one occasion, however, Hughie and Miss Freshwater were left together for a moment. The party had finished surveying the prospect from the roof of the College Chapel, and were painfully groping their way in single file down a spiral staircase. Only Hughie, Miss Freshwater, and the ubiquitous Miss Gaymer were left at the top.

"You go next, Joey," said Hughie; "then Miss Freshwater, then me."

The lady addressed plunged obediently into the gloomy chasm at her feet. She observed with frank jealousy that the other two did not immediately follow her, and accordingly waited for them in the belfry half-way down.

Presently she heard their footsteps descending; and Miss Freshwater's voice said

"I wanted to tell you about it first of anybody, Hughie, because you and I have always been such friends. Nobody else knows yet."

There was a silence, broken only by Hughie's footsteps,

evidently negotiating a difficult turn. Then Miss Freshwater's voice continued, a little wistfully

"Aren't you going to congratulate me?"

And Hughie's voice, sound ing strangely sepulchral in the echoing darkness, replied"Rather! I-I-hope you'll be very happy. Mind that step."

Miss Gaymer wondered what it was all about.

immediate and extensive foreign travel which sent that opponent of early marriages back to town in a thoroughly satisfied frame of mind.

"There ought to be a statue," said Jimmy Marrable to his cigar, as he leaned back reflectively in his railway-carriage, "set up in the capital of every British Colony, representing a female figure in an attitude of aloofness, and inscribed: Erected by a grateful Colony to its Principal Emigration Agent-The Girl at Home Who Married Somebody Else."

an

LADY MALMESBURY opens her book with a good story. Ardagh's father, an Irish squarson of the old sporting type who hunted a pack of hounds in friendly conjunction with the Roman Catholic priest of his parish, and a practical farmer, received from his son, a cadet at Woolwich, a dissertation upon farming, in reply to which, "with gentle irony,' he offered to send the cadet a paper on military engineering. This story, taken by itself, might convey the impression that Ardagh was lacking in modesty and apt to thrust his advice upon others. Such an impression would be entirely false, for one of his most remarkable characteristics was his unaffected modesty, which, in the opinion of the writer of this notice, who knew him for more than forty years, is largely responsible for his having been less known to the general public than his great services entitled him to be.

Of the wide range of his gifts we glean some knowledge from the opening pages of the Life. As a boy of seventeen he took a prize in Hebrew at Trinity College, Dublin. He passed first out of Woolwich, where he was the favourite pupil of that eminent mathe

Ardagh made his first mark outside outside his purely military duties at the age of twenty, as a passenger on board the auxiliary screw-steamship Victoria, on an Atlantic voyage, when, with rudder chains broken and pumps choked, she sprung a leak and had six feet of water in her engineroom. Ardagh found the cause of the choking of the pumps, had temporary additional pumps made out of his men's mess-tables, and later, with his men's aid, tinkered up the engines. "Had it not been for Ardagh and his engineers," writes a fellow-passenger, "we must have gone down." Al