By the way, how is your poultry?  I notice that your seizieme siecle rooster wants his tail remodelling.  Perhaps you are not worrying about new plumage for him till after the War, though it seems like carrying patriotism to absurd lengths.

Yours sincerely,

HENRY J. FORDYCE.

I hope you will allow your letter to be published in The Gazette.

In reply to this Petherton discharged with:—­

SIR,—­I am not concerned with the castle, which may or may not have existed in Surbury, nor am I interested in your friend’s monograph on Eleanor Crosses.  Other people besides yourself have the impudence to rush into print on matters of which they are sublimely ignorant.

Perhaps I had better inform you that EDWARD I. reigned at the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth centuries (1272-1307), not in the fifteenth, and a very slight knowledge of architecture would convince you that the Surbury relics are not earlier than the fifteenth century.

Trusting you will not commit any further absurdities, though I am not too sanguine,

I am, Yours faithfully,

FREDERICK PETHERTON.

My views are not for publication.  I prefer not to be mixed up in such a symposium.

It was evident that my neighbour’s weapon was beginning to get heated, so I flicked him with some more light artillery to draw him on, and loosed off with:—­

Dear Old Man,—­What a historian you are!  You have JOHN RICHARD GREEN beaten to his knees, FROUDE and GARDINER out of sight, and even the authoress of the immortal Little Arthur could not have placed EDDY I. with greater chronological exactitude.  In fact there seems to be no subject on which you cannot write informatively, which makes me sorry that you will not join in the literary fray in the local paper, as it deprives the natives of a great treat.

But—­there is a but, my dear Fred—­I cannot admit your claim to superior knowledge of the Surbury relics.  Remember, I have grown up with them as it were.  Yours ever,

HARRY FORDYCE.

Sir (exploded Petherton),—­What senseless drivel you write on the least provocation!  Whether you grew up with the Surbury relics or not, you have certainly decayed with them.  Every stone that’s left of that confounded ruin (probably only a simple market-cross) proclaims the date of its birth.  Even the broken finial and the two crockets lying on the ground expose your ignorance.  Eleanor Cross, bah!

Yours flly., F. PETHERTON.

I thought it was time to emerge from my literary camouflage and let off a heavy howitzer; which I did, with the following:—­