Teresa had fallen asleep over an illustrated guide to Florentine

art-galleries; at her side, somewhat dangerously near the edge of
the table, was a reading-lamp. If Fate had been decently kind to

him, thought Rex, bitterly, that lamp would have been knocked over
by the sleeper and would have given them something to think of

besides billiard matches.
There are occasions when one must take one's Fate in one's hands.

Rex took the lamp in his.
"Two hundred and thirty-seven, one hundred and fifteen." Strinnit

was at the table, and the balls lay in good position for him; he had
a choice of two fairly easy shots, a choice which he was never to

decide. A sudden hurricane of shrieks and a rush of stumbling feet
sent every one flocking to the door. The Dillot boy crashed into

the room, carrying in his arms the vociferous and somewhat
dishevelled Teresa Thundleford; her clothing was certainly not a

mass of flames, as the more excitable members of the party
afterwards declared, but the edge of her skirt and part of the

table-cover in which she had been hastily wrapped were alight in a
flickering, half-hearted manner. Rex flung his struggling burden on

the billiard table, and for one breathless minute the work of
beating out the sparks with rugs and cushions and playing on them

with soda-water syphons engrossed the energies of the entire
company.

"It was lucky I was passing when it happened," panted Rex; "some one
had better see to the room, I think the carpet is alight."

As a matter of fact the promptitude and energy of the rescuer had
prevented any great damage being done, either to the victim or her

surroundings. The billiard table had suffered most, and had to be
laid up for repairs; perhaps it was not the best place to have

chosen for the scene of salvage operations; but then, as Clovis
remarked, when one is rushing about with a blazing woman in one's

arms one can't stop to think out exactly where one is going to put
her.

THE BULL
Tom Yorkfield had always regarded his half-brother, Laurence, with a

lazy instinct of dislike, toned down, as years went on, to a
tolerant feeling of indifference. There was nothing very tangible

to dislike him for; he was just a blood-relation, with whom Tom had
no single taste or interest in common, and with whom, at the same

time, he had had no occasion for quarrel. Laurence had left the
farm early in life, and had lived for a few years on a small sum of

money left him by his mother; he had taken up painting as a
profession, and was reported to be doing fairly well at it, well

enough, at any rate, to keep body and soul together. He specialised
in painting animals, and he was successful in finding a certain

number of people to buy his pictures. Tom felt a comforting sense
of assuredsuperiority in contrasting his position with that of his

half-brother; Laurence was an artist-chap, just that and nothing
more, though you might make it sound more important by calling an

animal painter; Tom was a farmer, not in a very big way, it was
true, but the Helsery farm had been in the family for some

generations, and it had a good reputation for the stock raised on
it. Tom had done his best, with the little capital at his command,

to maintain and improve the standard of his small herd of cattle,
and in Clover Fairy he had bred a bull which was something rather

better than any that his immediate neighbours could show. It would
not have made a sensation in the judging-ring at an important cattle

show, but it was as vigorous, shapely, and healthy a young animal as
any small practical farmer could wish to possess. At the King's

Head on market days Clover Fairy was very highly spoken of, and
Yorkfield used to declare that he would not part with him for a

hundred pounds; a hundred pounds is a lot of money in the small
farming line, and probably anything over eighty would have tempted

him.
It was with some especial pleasure that Tom took advantage of one of

Laurence's rare visits to the farm to lead him down to the enclosure
where Clover Fairy kept solitary state--the grass widower of a

grazing harem. Tom felt some of his old dislike for his half-
brother reviving; the artist was becoming more languid in his

manner, more unsuitably turned-out in attire, and he seemed inclined
to impart a slightly patronising tone to his conversation. He took

no heed of a flourishing potato crop, but waxed enthusiastic over a
clump of yellow-flowering weed that stood in a corner by a gateway,

which was rather galling to the owner of a really very well weeded
farm; again, when he might have been duly complimentary about a

group of fat, black-faced lambs, that simply cried aloud for
admiration, he became eloquent over the foliage tints of an oak

copse on the hill opposite. But now he was being taken to inspect
the crowning pride and glory of Helsery; however grudging he might

be in his praises, however backward and niggardly with his
congratulations, he would have to see and acknowledge the many

excellences of that redoubtable animal. Some weeks ago, while on a
business journey to Taunton, Tom had been invited by his half-

brother to visit a studio in that town, where Laurence was
exhibiting one of his pictures, a large canvas representing a bull

standing knee-deep in some marshy ground; it had been good of its
kind, no doubt, and Laurence had seemed inordinately pleased with

it; "the best thing I've done yet," he had said over and over again,
and Tom had generously agreed that it was fairly life-like. Now,

the man of pigments was going to be shown a real picture, a living
model of strength and comeliness, a thing to feast the eyes on, a

picture that exhibited new pose and action with every shifting
minute, instead of standing glued into one unvarying attitude

between the four walls of a frame. Tom unfastened a stout wooden
door and led the way into a straw-bedded yard.

"Is he quiet?" asked the artist, as a young bull with a curly red
coat came inquiringly towards them.

"He's playful at times," said Tom, leaving his half-brother to
wonder whether the bull's ideas of play were of the catch-as-catch-

can order. Laurence made one or two perfunctory comments on the
animal's appearance and asked a question or so as to his age and

such-like details; then he coolly turned the talk into another
channel.

"Do you remember the picture I showed you at Taunton?" he asked.
"Yes," grunted Tom; "a white-faced bull standing in some slush.

Don't admire those Herefords much myself; bulky-looking brutes,
don't seem to have much life in them. Daresay they're easier to

paint that way; now, this young beggar is on the move all the time,
aren't you, Fairy?"

"I've sold that picture," said Laurence, with considerable
complacency in his voice.

"Have you?" said Tom; "glad to hear it, I'm sure. Hope you're
pleased with what you've got for it."

"I got three hundred pounds for it," said Laurence.
Tom turned towards him with a slowly rising flush of anger in his

face. Three hundred pounds! Under the most favourable market
conditions that he could imagine his prized Clover Fairy would

hardly fetch a hundred, yet here was a piece of varnished canvas,
painted by his half-brother, selling for three times that sum. It

was a cruel insult that went home with all the more force because it
emphasised the triumph of the patronising, self-satisfied Laurence.

The young farmer had meant to put his relative just a little out of
conceit with himself by displaying the jewel of his possessions, and

now the tables were turned, and his valued beast was made to look
cheap and insignificant beside the price paid for a mere picture.

It was so monstrously unjust; the painting would never be anything
more than a dexterous piece of counterfeit life, while Clover Fairy

was the real thing, a monarch in his little world, a personality in
the countryside. After he was dead, even, he would still be

something of a personality; his descendants would graze in those
valley meadows and hillside pastures, they would fill stall and byre

and milking-shed, their good red coats would speckle the landscape