sudden reaction against me, changed her mind, or something. Said I looked shabby and untidy and dirty, and she'd made a mistake— a silly, mad mistake. No accounting for women. They're all alike.'

And Racton smiled, a slow shadow of a smile, that played about the corners of his mouth for a moment, and was gone. 'Where did she go? Why didn't she write to me?' he snapped out harshly, and so curtly that Compton, who was just beginning to get back to man's ways again, jumped.

'Went to her married sister, I believe. I told her to write to you, and she said it would be no use; you'd never believe or forgive.'

'No more I should,' came the prompt reply.

Compton began to look more like a boy again, and eyed the gun. 'Um!' said he. 'Eh?'

'Nothing.'

'Look here, Compton; even if I believed you, what did you come here for now, anyway?' Racton asked, his eyes cold and hard as ever, his face black.

"Your wife wrote and asked me to get her deeds, and, like a fool, I took this way.' 'Why?'

'We didn't know what you'd do. I feared you wouldn't believe me, especially as I was getting 'em for her.

Send 'em yourself. other out of your

But you do, don't you? We never even saw each

sight, you know. It was all a silly, mad idea, made on the spur of the moment. If you were a different sort of man, you'd understand.'

'I don't, and I'm glad I'm not,' was Racton's uncompromising answer.

'Were

'And you really mean to kill me, and be a murderer?' went on Compton. there ever cartridges in that gun?'

And for answer Racton held up for him to see two cartridges with the oil from the chambers of the gun still upon them. It seemed enough answer truly, but Racton never actually said; and no one has ever found out whether he really knew that there were no cartridges in the gun when he aimed it at Compton's head, or whether he did not know. Even his wife never knew, but she knew she was very happy to get back to him, and she seemed to think much more of the new Racton than she ever had of the oldwhich only shows. W-e-1-1-the shadows come and go, my friends; the shadows come and go

THE

BREAD AND BUTTER.

HE car that had passed him once came back again, and swung, turned round, and stopped-pulsating and waiting. A man got out and came back, and even in the cheating moonlight Ravenhurst could see that, in spite of his clothes, he looked a plug ugly one.

'You picked that up,' said the man, pointing at Monty' Ravenhurst's attaché-case, and Monty stopped. He had not picked it up. It was his. He had been using it more or less all day at the little local estate office he ran, and was returning home to tea-dinner.

'Pardon me, I did nothing of the kind. It's mine. Have you lost one?' He spoke very quietly, with rather a drawl, and there was nothing at all to provoke a quarrel in his tone. Yet it seemed to make the man mad.

'Give it up, sharp,' was the answer, and the man came a step nearer.

Monty's face flushed. He was the wrong sort to deal with in that way, and a look came into his eyes that any but a fool might have read.

'I've already told you,' he answered, even more politely than ever, and that alone was a warning note—with him.

But the man gave no reply to that; he rushed Ravenhurst.

The result was curious; also, it was unexpected. Monty did not look like the sort of man to produce it, till you had heard him give his views upon science versus strength-then he did.

Monty's right hand shot out, open, and stopped the man's chin. In some way the man's right-hand blow fell off Monty's arm. It was all as quick as lightning, and hard to follow. There was a shuffling of feet, and— the man was on his back, using language to match.

But to do this Monty had had to put down his attaché-case, and he now quickly stooped to pick it up again. Peering in the moonlight, he could not see it for a moment, but the next moment he did. It was in the hands of a second man, who was running back towards the car. This individual had evidently got out of the car on the side away from him, and short-circuited him neatly.

It was at this moment that the individual on the ground left off swearing, and got up rather suddenly. He was being given one of

the rare opportunities that people got of realising that, when he chose, Monty Ravenhurst could sprint, and the view he got did not seem to please him.

Monty caught up the man who was making off with his attaché-case almost before the latter realised what was happening, gripped him by the chin, wrenched him over backwards, snatched up the case, and was gone over the nearest gate, and away across a field at a pace that did not look like his being overtaken.

Neither, however, seemed willing to overtake him, but they had something else that could. Both of the men from the car arrived, breathless and cursing, at the gate together. Followed an unmistakable bar-like gleam in the moonlight, a flicker of flame, and a short, sharp, smacking report through the night silence.

Monty heard it as he ran. He heard, also, the peculiarly triumphant little song at being released which a bullet makes go past his head, and not being a candidate for the next world -he had a wife and children-he promptly dropped the attaché-case as he ran, but he did not stop running.

From behind the next hedge he watched one of the men race out, recover the said case, and race back to the car again. Then the car droned away into the night, and Monty was