from its cathedral roof for the black smiths to mould into bullets.

Under the command of a certain Irish-American named Tate, the invaders made a very vigorous beginning. Their landing-place was not sufficiently secure for an encampment. The men, therefore, pushed on to the little white-cotted village of Llanwnda, a constant rise from the sea-level, and passing its village green (doubtless then, as now, the resort of the local gossipers, including droves of garrulous geese), climbed the rocky plateau on the other side. They did more. They dragged casks of ammunition with them, and made all ready for holding a fairly defensible situation. If Tate could have kept all his men as well disciplined as these workers, he might have made a strong show even against Lord Cawdor's forces. But while some were thus perspiring in the darkness, others were dispersed about the rugged headland, which was, and is, far more populous than the nature of the soil would seem to justify. Farmstead after farmstead was entered and sacked. The Llanwnda geese were especially attractive to the invaders. "Not a fowl," it is said, "was left alive, and the geese were literally boiled in butter." As it happened, there had recently been hereabouts the wreck of a vessel laden with wine. One result of this was that the Welshmen's cottages were all surprisingly blessed with good liquor. The sequel was of course inevitable.

One after another General Tate's precious crew became very drunk, and the majority unmanageable besides. Mr. Fenton, the county authority already quoted, tells us that "the veil of night was kindly drawn over their execrable orgies, disgraceful to nature, and which humanity shudders to imagine." Really, however, nothing so inordinately dreadful seems to have occurred. At least there is no circumstantial account of the invasion which it revolts one to read. The first report, in the Times of February 27, is not of a very sanguinary kind. We

learn that the very children of Pen Caer took up reaping-hooks and abetted their parents in defence of their property. Four Frenchmen are then said to have been killed-two by a father and his son, who caught them helping themselves to calves in a stable; and a third having been dismally run through with a pitchfork "while regaling himself with ale and bread and cheese." By then the mortality among the Welsh was two only. And, as a matter of fact, this about represents the whole loss of life in the affair. What would have happened if Tate could have kept his men sober, and marched them promptly over the hills and down to Fishguard (which was quite worth sacking), one can, of course, only conjecture. The pretty little town was then a place of fair importance for its trade with the Mediterranean in cured red and white herrings, and there were country-houses hard by, including Mr. Fenton's, which would assuredly have yielded better spoil than the stumpy white homesteads of Pen Caer.

The drinking and the boiling of geese in butter went on gaily enough throughout Wednesday. Tate must then have seen that it was all up even with his chance of leaving a memorable mark on the neighborhood. He was at Trehowel Farm, whither he had been led by a Welshman named Bowen, who was with his troops, and who had formerly worked on the farm. Like his men, he lived freely on the produce of his environment. Not content with eating the hams and geese, he "eviscerated the feather beds for the sake of the tick, burnt the furniture, and left a mere shell to greet the return of the proprietor." At another farmhouse, one may still see a grandfather's clock with a bullet-hole nicely middled in its case. A tipsy Frenchman sho it, presumably taking its pendulum for the tongue of a challenger. Llanwnda church was bound to suffer. It is an ancient little building, with heavy arches, an old font, and some interesting decorated stones embedded in its

he goes in danger of his life, experience seems to show that a prolonged mental strain often whets the appetite even more keenly than does mere bodily exertion.

The meal over, Norris rolled a cigarette thoughtfully, and then called all his people about him.

"Things are in this wise," he said. "The king has sworn that he will not suffer Ah Ku and Chik his wife to be removed, and I have said that I will aid them to depart. There will be trouble at dawn when we seek to escort these people to the boat, and it may well be that few of those who follow me will remain alive. Therefore think well. If there be among you any who fear the risk, you have my leave to depart hence to-night. But may the curse of God Almighty blight the soul and body, heart and brain and vitals of the man who elects to follow me to-morrow and fails in the hour of need. Give me your answer that I may hear."

"The Tuan speaks for us both," cried Raja Haji Hamid. He had seated him self behind Norris, for he did not wish to be regarded by the other Malays as one who had any choice in the matter. "Tuan," said an old man, speaking for his fellows, whose eyes glistened, and whose teeth flashed white in the many lights, as the excited faces thronged behind the spokesman, "we all have eaten thy rice, and worn garments of thy giving in the days of thy ease. Now trouble has come, we will follow thee, not only unto death, but, if God wills, unto the very Lake of Fire. I speak for all my fellows. Come-let us make ready our arms against the morrow."

"It is well," said Norris, and whistling to the tune of "There's another jolly row down-stairs," which seemed to him to be wonderfully appropriate to the circumstances, he turned into the living-room.

Shortly afterwards two chiefs were ushered in. They were friendly to Norris, and came from the sultan to try

cause the fool-hardy, strong-willed white man to forego his purpose.

"What profits it to talk further?" said Norris, when he had heard all they had to say, and had listened patiently to their gloomy forebodings of sudden and violent death. "If we spoke together until dawn, I could not recall my words, nor would if I could." So his visitors returned sorrowfully to their king.

"It is enough," said the ruler of Pelesu to his assembled chiefs. "He is a Kafir, an infidel, and all such know not the fear of death, for they believe in no life to come, nor dread the fires of the terrible place of which they are the everlasting fuel. For me, I go a-hunting, but I leave this matter in your hands, and ye shall not suffer Ah Ku and Chik to leave Pelesu. The king will be absent when the deed is done, and so he knows nought of what occurs."

The chiefs lifted up their fingers in silent homage. With them to hear was to obey. No man thought of protesting, or blaming their monarch for his selfish policy, and half an hour later the king was being paddled up the river in his boat by a few of his youngest and least warriors. The more experienced men were needed for the work which to-morrow's dawn would see.

It was ten o'clock at night before Jack Norris sat down at his desk to write what he believed was to be his posthumous despatch. He knew that after his death the good people of Pelesu would seek to justify the murder by the fabrication of some lying story. which should attribute to the event causes wholly disconnected with politics; wherefore it was absolutely necessary, from his point of view, that a true record of events should, sooner or later, fall into the hands of those of his own people who might hereafter come to gather up his bones.

He wrote calmly and steadily. a cigarette between his lips, pausing

every now and again to seek the word he wanted, or to listen to the "run" of a sentence. His mind was working with more than its usual activity, and he flattered himself that the despatch would do him credit, though at a date when he would no longer be at hand to profit by it. The absolute certainty of his conviction that he had only a few more hours left him in which to live was present at the back of his mind during all the time that he sat writing, but it only served to throw the other facts with which he was dealing more clearly into relief. The knowledge of an imminent danger, which is also perfectly certain to end in death, has a curiously numbing effect upon the nerves, and fear for the time seems to stand and gaze instead of rushing in with its cruel claws to tear and rend the soul.

as

When the despatch had been drafted, revised and finally signed, Norris began a letter to his mother. He told her the facts of the position in which he then found himself, of the certainty he felt of death on the morrow, and wound up with a few simple words of love and thankfulness for her sweet love to him. He added a word or two of sorrow for the grief his death would bring, but he was conscious all the time that he reviewed his case dispassionately, though in some unexplained way it was that of a third person, the pathos of whose death had no power to move him to tears or sentimentality. Then he wrote a short line to his little sister. But here things were different, for he knew that she had not the strength to bear his death with the resignation which his mother would show, though perhaps the latter loved him the more dearly of the two. His words conjured up his sister's piteous weeping face, and the despair which his death would bring to her wide, soft eyes. He finished the letter with a sob, and from pure inabilty to go on with it. For the first time that night he felt heartily sorry for himself and for the distant hearts that loved him.

In a moment, however, he pulled himself together, and having placed his papers in the hollow of a bamboo, he hid it carefully in the thatch of his house. A small boy, whose tender years would probably serve to save his life, was bid to mark the spot, so that he might show it to the white men who would come to Pelesu when Norris was dead and gone.

All this occupied nearly four hours, and at two o'clock Jack went to the bathing platform at the back of his house in order to take a dip in the river before lying down to snatch a few hours' sleep. He was just preparing to undress when one of his natives came to the door of the kitchen, which looked out upon the river, and said:

"Tuan, a man hath come from the house of Ah Ku, praying thee to go thither speedily!"

"What is it?" asked Norris.

"Thy servant knows not," replied the

man.

Norris snatched up a sword, and crying to Râja Haji Hamid to follow him, ran down the street in the direction of Che' Ah Ku's house. Presently the night wind bore to him a shrill, despairing keening, which he knew meant death, and on entering Che' Ah Ku's house he found Chik prostrate across the corpse of her husband, wailing as only a native woman can when the horror of death, and the loss of one who is very dear, have freshly smitten her. Ah Ku had died while Chik sat by and tended him-died of the shattered vessels in his chest which all Jack's care had been powerless to heal.

Chik screamed and fainted, recovering to fall once more upon the corpse, whispering little vain words of love to ears that could not hear, and showering caresses upon hands, feet and face that had ceased to feel for ever. Jack knew that until the elaborate burial rites of the Chinese had been complied with, Chik would refuse to leave her dead, and that all thoughts of removing her to the colony must, for the present, be abandoned. He assured himself that