His twinkling orbs under their black smudge of eyebrow appraised the junior constable with faint, musing interest.  “A quare chap is Yorkey,” he continued gently—­shielding a match-flame and puffing with noisy respiration—­“a good polisman—­knows th’ Criminal Code from A tu Z—­eyah! but mighty quare.  I misdoubt how th’ tu av yez will get along.”  He sighed deeply, muttering half to himself, “I may have tu take shteps—­this time! . . .”

A rather ominous beginning, thought George.  But, curbing his natural curiosity, he resolutely held his peace, awaiting more enlightenment.  This not being forthcoming—­his superior having relapsed once more into taciturn silence—­he turned again to Yorke’s exhibits with pondering interest.  Sounding far-off and indistinct in the frosty stillness of the bleak foothills came the faint echoes of a coyote’s shrill “ki-yip-yapping”—­again and again, as if endeavouring to convey some insidious message.  George continued to stare at the pictures.  Gad! what a strange fantastic mind the man must have! he mused—­what rotten, erratic desecration to shove pictures indiscriminately together like that! . . .  Lack of space was no excuse.  Millet’s “Angelus,” “Ally Sloper at the Derby,” a splendid lithograph of “The Angel of Pity at the Well of Cawnpore,” Lottie Collins, scantily attired, in her song and dance “Tara-ra-ra-boom-de-ay,” Sir Frederick Leighton’s “Wedded,” a gruesome depiction of a Chinese execution at Canton, an old-fashioned engraving of that dashing, debonair cavalry officer, “Major Hodson,” of Indian Mutiny fame, George Robey, as a nurse-maid, wheeling Little Tich in a perambulator, the grim, torture-lined face of Slatin Pasha, a ridiculously obscene picture entitled “Two coons scoffing oysters for a wager,” that glorious edifice the “Taj Mahal” of India, and so on.  “Divarsiment” indeed!

To this ill-assorted admixture three exceptions only were grouped with any sense of reason.  The central picture was a beautifully coloured reproduction of Sir Hubert Herkomer’s famous masterpiece “The Last Muster.”  Lovers of art subjects are doubtless familiar with this immortal painting.  It depicts a pathetic congregation of old, white-haired, war-worn pensioners attending divine service in the chapel of Old Chelsea Hospital, with the variegated lights from the stained-glass windows flooding them with soft gentle colours.  Flanking it on either side were portraits of the original founders of this historical institution in 1692—­Charles II (The Merry Monarch) and his kindly-hearted “light o’ love” Sweet Nell Gwynn of Old Drury.

With curiously mixed feelings George finally tore himself away from Yorke’s pathetically grotesque attempt at wall-adornment.  Strive as he would within his soul to ridicule, the pictures seemed somehow almost to shout at him with hidden meaning.  As if a voice—­a drunken voice, but gentlemanly withall—­was hiccuping in his ear:  “Paradise Lost, old man! (hic) Paradise Lost!”