To my unutterable horror, I saw that that miserable poodle, after begging unnoticed at the tea-table for some time, had retired to an open space before it, where he was industriously standing on his head.

We gathered round and examined the animal curiously, as he continued to balance himself gravely in his abnormal position.  “Good gracious, John,” cried Mrs. Currie, “I never saw Bingo do such a thing before in his life!”

“Very odd,” said the colonel, putting up his glasses; “never learned that from me.”

“I tell you what I fancy it is,” I suggested wildly.  “You see, he was always a sensitive, excitable animal, and perhaps the—­the sudden joy of his return has gone to his head—­upset him, you know.”

They seemed disposed to accept this solution, and, indeed, I believe they would have credited Bingo with every conceivable degree of sensibility; but I felt myself that if this unhappy animal had many more of these accomplishments I was undone, for the original Bingo had never been a dog of parts.

“It’s very odd,” said Travers, reflectively, as the dog recovered his proper level, “but I always thought that it was half the right ear that Bingo had lost.”

“So it is, isn’t it?” said the colonel.  “Left, eh?  Well, I thought myself it was the right.”

My heart almost stopped with terror; I had altogether forgotten that.  I hastened to set the point at rest.  “Oh, it was the left,” I said, positively; “I know it because I remember so particularly thinking how odd it was that it should be the left ear, and not the right!” I told myself this should be positively my last lie.

“Why odd?” asked Frank Travers, with his most offensive Socratic manner.

“My dear fellow, I can’t tell you,” I said, impatiently; “everything seems odd when you come to think at all about it.”

“Algernon,” said Lilian, later on, “will you tell Aunt Mary and Mr. Travers and—­me how it was you came to find Bingo?  Mr. Travers is quite anxious to hear all about it.”

I could not very well refuse; I sat down and told the story, all my own way.  I painted Blagg perhaps rather bigger and blacker than life, and described an exciting scene, in which I recognised Bingo by his collar in the streets, and claimed and bore him off then and there in spite of all opposition.

I had the inexpressible pleasure of seeing Travers grinding his teeth with envy as I went on, and feeling Lilian’s soft, slender hand glide silently into mine as I told my tale in the twilight.

All at once, just as I reached the climax, we heard the poodle barking furiously at the hedge which separated my garden from the road.

“There’s a foreign-looking man staring over the hedge,” said Lilian; “Bingo always did hate foreigners.”

There certainly was a swarthy man there, and, though I had no reason for it then, somehow my heart died within me at the sight of him.