perhaps “the gents,” as he calls us, would enjoy digging a clear space round the trees.  We thought we would, and set to work.  But SARK having woefully hacked the stem of a young apple-tree (Lord Suffield) and I having laboriously and carefully cut away the entire network of the roots of a damson-tree, under the impression that it was a weed, it was decided that ARPACHSHAD had better do this skilled labour.  We will attain to it by-and-by.

ARPACHSHAD has now been engaged on the work for a fortnight, and I think it will carry him on into the spring.  The way he walks round the harmless apple-tree before cautiously putting in the spade, is very impressive.  Having dug three exceedingly small sods, he packs them in a basket, and then, with a great sigh, heaves it on to his shoulder, and walks off to store the sods by the potting-shed.  Anything more solemn than his walk, more depressing than his mien, has not been seen outside a churchyard.  If he were burying the child of his old age, he could not look more cut up.  SARK, who, probably owing to personal associations, is beginning to develop some sense of humour, walked by the side of him this morning whistling “The Dead March in Saul.”

The effect was unexpected and embarrassing.  ARPACHSHAD slowly relieved himself of the burden of the three sods, dropped them on the ground with a disproportionate thud, and, producing a large pocket-handkerchief, whose variegated and brilliant colours were, happily, dimmed by a month’s use, mopped his eyes.

“You’ll excuse me, gents,” he snuffled, “but I never hear that there tune, ‘Rule Britanny,’ whistled or sung but I think of the time when I went down to see my son off from Portsmouth for the Crimee, ’Rule Britanny’ was the tune they played when he walked proudly aboard.  He was in all the battles, Almy, Inkerman, Ballyklaver, Seringapatam, and Sebastopol.”

“And was he killed?” asked the Member for SARK, making as though he would help ARPACHSHAD with the basket on to his shoulder again.

“No,” said ARPACHSHAD, overlooking the attention—­“he lived to come home; and last week he rode in the Lord Mayor’s coach through the streets of London, with all his medals on.  Five shillings for the day, and a good blow-out, presided over by Mr. AUGUSTIN HARRIS, in his Sheriff’s Cloak and Chain at the ‘Plough-and-Thunder,’ in the Barbican.”

HARTINGTON came down to see us to-day.  Mentioned ARPACHSHAD, and his natural indisposition to hurry himself.

“Why should he?” asked HARTINGTON, yawning, as he leaned over the fence.  “What’s the use, as Whosthis says, of ever climbing up the climbing wave?  I can’t understand how you fellows go about here with your shirt-sleeves turned up, bustling along as if you hadn’t a minute to spare.  It’s just the same in the House; bustle everywhere; everybody straining and pushing—­everybody but me.”

“Well,” said SARK, “but you’ve been up in Scotland, making quite a lot of speeches.  Just as if you were Mr. G. himself.”