learnt the poem by heart, and also found out the tune somehow and sang it when possible. Once, in fact, he woke up in the night singing it from force of habit, as the saying is, and his prefect, who happened to be Mactaggert, said there was a time for everything, and threatened to report Rice if he did it again.

I asked Rice why he had made such a great effort and learnt anything he wasn't obliged to learn, and he said, firstly, because it was the grandest poem he had ever heard, and, secondly, because he had a great idea some day to sing it to Fortescue, as it applied specially to him by dwelling on the fearfulness of hanging back when the Empire cried out for you.

The poem said the Empire was calling to every one of her sons of low and high degree, and so, of course, it was also calling to Fortescue; and Rice thought that as it was pretty certain Fortescue wouldn't read it, and, no doubt, fought shy of patriotic poetry in general just now, he meant to wait for some happy opportunity when Fortescue was not in a position to get out of earshot and sing it to him.

But the opportunity did not come, so Rice adopted the former plan of leaving the poem in Fortescue's room. He had plenty of printed copies of the words, because the poem, after first appearing in a London newspaper of great renown, had been copied, at the special wish of the author, into hundreds and thousands of other papers; and to show you the tremendous liking people had for it, even the Merivale Weekly Trumpet printed it and Milly Dunston found it there.

She, by the way, had another pretty bitter cut at Fortescue, which cost more money, and she told Rice she had paid five shillings and sixpence for her great insult. In fact, she sent Fortescue a shawl and a cap, such as is worn by aged women,