curtained alcove, I saw a shelf full of grinning skulls-six of them in a row-which the old warrior, with a hobby for anthropology, had collected as souvenirs of his six campaigns. Each skull was neatly labelled with the name and date at which it was acquired, and one, as I well remembered, bore the legend "Peking, 1860." As skull-collecting is not a pastime to which military men are usually addicted, I had no doubt in my mind that this was the long-lamented headpiece of the late expectant Prefect. As I sat there on Kao's stove-bed I had the creepy sensation of being a predestined puppet playing a minor part in a shadow-play plotted by mysterious Oriental gods. The Chinese, of course, would explain the matter more simply. They would say that the expectant Prefect, or his ancestors, had acquired merit sufficient to make it incumbent upon the Shining Ones to avert from them any injury inflicted by foreign or other devils. My rôle, at all events, seemed clear enough.

"Kao Chang - kuei - ti," I said, when his tale was told, "we live in a strangely small world, and the ways of the gods are inscrutable. My words may sound to you like foolishness, and wind in the ear. Nevertheless, I believe that in a little while your grandfather's spirit may cease from wandering forlornly by the Yellow Springs, for I may be able to recover that which was taken

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from your burial-ground thirty years ago. I believe that I know the man who took the skull, and that he has it still." 'Hsien-Sheng," he replied, "if what you say is true, then of a surety it must be that in a former incarnation we two were blood-brothers. It is no small thing that you, a foreigner from afar, should have saved the life of my son; if now you can restore serenity to the wandering spirit of my revered ancestor, how can I ever requite such benefits?"

"If I succeed in getting back the skull, my friend, all I ask is that you shall forget an injury unwittingly committed. Remember that everywhere in war-time things are done which decent folks condemn, and do not hate a whole nation for one man's misdeeds."

'You are right," he replied; "at all events I have learned from you the truth of our sage's saying that within the Four Seas all are brethren.'

For a little while he sat lost in deep thought, puffing at his water-pipe. I, too, was silent, thinking of the fateful fingers of the long arm of coincidence and the strange whirligig of Time. Then I noticed that something was worrying Kao. His cheerful expression had given way to one of uneasiness; there were wrinkles of doubt on his troubled brow.

"Hsien-Sheng," he said, "I trust your word, and have no doubt that you believe you know the man who took away

my grandfather's skull, and can persuade him to return it. But you may be mistaken. After all, there were many graves in China and many soldiers in your army."

It had occurred to me, of course that Kao might need to be convinced of the authenticity of any skull restored to his ancestral grave, and that the ghost of the expectant Prefect would in no wise be placated by coffining the wrong head-piece with his remains. At the same time, I felt fairly sure in my mind that his was the only skull which had left North China with the British Army.

"Would you be able to tell if it were the right one?" I asked.

"I think so," he replied; "for I remember that my grandfather had lost nearly all his upper teeth on one side -the result of a kick from a

vicious pony. It gave his face a twisted expression."

"Let your mind be at ease," I said; "in three or four months we shall know. As for me, I am certain that before long your ancestor will rest in peace.'

And so it turned out. I had no difficulty in persuading the colonel to exchange the skull for a much more interesting specimen-a sacrificial altarpiece, bought from a priest at the Yellow Temple; and Kao, having satisfied his doubts as to its identity, returned it to its grave with much kowtowing and burning of joss-paper. In memory of the occasion he gave me a pair of eight-armed Kuanyin, cunningly wrought in sandalwood by one of the most famous craftsmen of the days of Yung Cheng; and thereafter no European was ever called "foreign devil" in the neighbourhood of the Laughing Gods.

ALMOST everybody knows that the creator of "Jorrocks was one Robert Smith Surtees, a north-country squire, and hardly anybody knows more than that. We are all, therefore, the more indebted to Mr E. D. Cuming for his discovery that Surtees during the last months of his life was engaged in writing a book, to be entitled Sporting and Social Recollections,' which, as appears from his papers, he proposed to publish under his own name.

Reticent as he always was about any literary work he might have in hand, this project was quite unknown to his family at Hamsterley Hall. When the mass of his papers was stored away after his death, the notes for these 'Recollections' passed unnoticed, and were stored with the rest. The reason was a very simple one, as explained by Mr Cuming:

"Surtees was an exceedingly active and painstaking Justice of the Peace. It was his practice to take copious notes of the cases that came before him on the Bench, and these he never destroyed. Such notes were written on sheets of thin blue paper 10" by 8", and he used the same stationery for his literary work. Large quantities of these legal memoranda were put aside, and submerged among them I found the rough

notes, identical in appearance, for 'Sporting and Social Recollections.'

"Some of these rough drafts must have been lost. . . . All the MSS. are incomplete ; numerous sheets bear nothing save a few words, which manifestly were to serve as reminders or key-notes'; others break off abruptly, the sentence unfinished; in others again are blanks, left until the writer's memory should enable him to fill in place-name, proper name, or date . . which sufficiently proves that the matter now placed before the reader would have undergone revision and addition; but anything from the hand of an author whose popularity has, if anything, increased of recent years must be of interest; and there can be no question concerning the propriety of publishing these papers."

...

None whatever, since Surtees designed them for publication, though only as 'Recollections.' Mr Cuming, by giving his work the title of Robert Smith Surtees (creator of "Jorrocks "),' by Himself and E. D. Cuming, rather raises the hope of an autobiography-a hope which his book does not fulfil. It is essentially a thing of recollections.

We do not expect, and we most certainly will never re

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ceive, any very "intimate revelation concerning Robert Surtees, one of the most reserved of men. He was probably distant, even with himself," to borrow an expressive phrase from Mrs Campbell. It may often be noticed in men of exceptionally quick observation, that they are very little occupied with their own internal experience; and the converse also usually holds good. In Mr Cuming, Surtees has a sympathetic commentator, keeping, like himself, to the tangible, the concrete, or the entertaining aspect of things; and, be it observed, it is no indication whatever of a superficial nature if an author chooses to keep in his writings "on the windy side o' care."

Mr Cuming is sympathetic on another point too. He remarks that

"Indiscretion is the better part of biography-and autobiography-nowadays; that merit is absent from this book. The originals of many of Surtees' characters might be identified, but as the immediate descendants of these are living, it has been thought well to refrain."

The loss of interest from a reserve like this is purely imaginary. Few people realise perhaps how little the "originals " of characters contribute to the whole and true conception of them as presented by an author of genius. The living "originals are, in point of fact, hardly authentic. Though it

seems to be a law that every character of importance is suggested by some "original,' that original may often be no more than a face, a voice, an incident, around which grows an entirely new conception in the author's mind. Yet he can never deny the "original," when pointed out by the astute but unintelligent acquaintance who says

"Oh, I recognised A— at once in your novel, though you called him B. I knew him by the way he rubs his nose, just as you say. But isn't it too bad of you to make him treat his wife like that? Does he really, though ?—No! -Then why on earth did you say he did? By Jove! I'd call that a libel, you know. But I suppose an action for libel would suit you well enough: sell your book for you."

Undoubtedly Mr Cuming has done well to refrain from identifying originals, even of three generations ago. Those originals are indisputably dead; but the characters of Surtees are indisputably alive, and might feel annoyance.

The author of their being, Robert Surtees, was born in 1803, a younger son of one of the oldest families in Durham, living for many generations in their beautiful seat of Hamsterley Hall. The boy was "reared in the atmosphere and tradition of sport. His great-grandfather and grandfather had kept hounds, the latter hunting country that marched with the territory hunted by Mr Ralph

Lambton. His father kept both foxhounds and harriers: one pack at Hamsterley, where the kennels remain, though fallen into disrepair; the other at Milkwell Burn House, two miles away. Under the circumstances it would have been strange if Surtees had not displayed the love of sport that distinguished him."

His first school was at Ovingham, in Northumberland, only seven miles from his home, where with other sons of northern gentlefolk, Loraines, Blacketts, and Allgoods, he imbibed the rudiments of learning, and lived on the rough fare which is always considered good enough for schoolboys, though it would be scornfully refused by the servants in their homes. Surtees gives a little sketch of an old couple who lived hard by the school, keeping a tramps' lodging-house, and selling sweets to the schoolboys, which they made on the same agreeable premises.

"Though Jack Johnson kept no books-indeed, he couldn't write he nevertheless gave tick, the debt being recorded by sundry chalk-marks on his black oak press, a penny being represented by a single upright stroke, six of which were replaced by a round O, which in its turn was converted into a shilling by a cross through the middle.

"Jack kept a cuddy-nobody could tell the reason why, for his trips to Newcastle for stock were singularly few, and the carrier would have brought

him all he wanted for a mere trifle. But it was Jack's pleasure to keep a cuddy, and, not liking to buy fodder, he used absolutely to go about the lanes in summer clipping grass for hay with a pair of scissors."

This little sketch of Jack Johnson and his cuddy might be recognised at a glance by any lover of Surtees as his and no other's. It is so clear and clean-cut, without a superfluous word, or the least touch of ornament, yet admirable in style. One would like to recommend it to examiners as a "piece "piece" for translation; but they might possibly reject it on account of the cuddy. Even an examiner is sometimes posed, but it requires a very simple thing indeed to pose him.

In the genial spring of 1825 Surtees first went to London, travelling up from Newcastleon-Tyne by the old Highflyer coach, to catch which at eight in the morning he had to leave Hamsterley between five and six; then by a steady persevering grind continued throughout all that day, all that night, and all the following day to reach the dismal White Horse Inn in Fetter Lane at eight that night. He remarks that "the fare was £6 inside, and it was considered very fine travelling."

No gentleman yet dreamt of the coming time when he would travel by rail. Surtees remembered seeing in his early days "the first locomotive engine puffing and blowing and straining itself on the Wylam