“Wot wos yer doin’ hup there?” asked Judlip, tightening the grip.

“I’m S-Santa Claus, Sir.  P-please, Sir, let me g-go”

“Hold him,” I shouted.  “He’s a German.”

“It’s my dooty ter caution yer that wotever yer say now may be used in hevidence against yer, yer old sinner.  Pick up that there sack, an’ come along o’ me.”

The captive snivelled something about peace on earth, good will toward men.

“Yuss,” said Judlip.  “That’s in the Noo Testament, ain’t it?  The Noo Testament contains some uncommon nice readin’ for old gents an’ young ladies.  But it ain’t included in the librery o’ the Force.  We confine ourselves to the Old Testament—­O.T., ‘ot.  An’ ’ot you’ll get it.  Hup with that sack, an’ quick march!”

I have seen worse attempts at a neck-wrench, but it was just not slippery enough for Judlip.  And the kick that Judlip then let fly was a thing of beauty and a joy for ever.

“Frog’s-march him!” I shrieked, dancing.  “For the love of heaven, frog’s-march him!”

Trotting by Judlip’s side to the Station, I reckoned it out that if Slushby had not been at the Club I should not have been here to see.  Which shows that even Slushbys are put into this world for a purpose.

OUT OF HARM’S WAY

By

A.C.  B*NS*N

Chapter XLII.—­Christmas

More and more, as the tranquil years went by, Percy found himself able to draw a quiet satisfaction from the regularity, the even sureness, with which, in every year, one season succeeded to another.  In boyhood he had felt always a little sad at the approach of autumn.  The yellowing leaves of the lime trees, the creeper that flushed to so deep a crimson against the old grey walls, the chrysanthemums that shed so prodigally their petals on the smooth green lawn—­all these things, beautiful and wonderful though they were, were somehow a little melancholy also, as being signs of the year’s decay.  Once, when he was fourteen or fifteen years old, he had overheard a friend of the family say to his father “How the days are drawing in!”—­a remark which set him thinking deeply, with an almost morbid abandonment to gloom, for quite a long time.  He had not then grasped the truth that in exactly the proportion in which the days draw in they will, in the fullness of time, draw out.  This was a lesson that he mastered in later years.  And, though the waning of summer never failed to touch him with the sense of an almost personal loss, yet it seemed to him a right thing, a wise ordination, that there should be these recurring changes.  Those men and women of whom the poet tells us that they lived in “a land where it was always afternoon”—­could they, Percy often wondered, have felt quite that thankfulness which on a fine afternoon is felt by us dwellers in ordinary climes?  Ah, no!  Surely it is because