Genre - Short Story. You are on the page - 24

ishment to the luxuriant and deadly deserts of Western Africa, and to the dull and dreary half clearings of South America, it proved itself a charm, a talisman against ennui and despondency. Impossible even to open the pages without a vision starting into view; with out drawing a picture from the pinacothek of the brain; without reviving a host of memories and reminiscences which are not the common property of travellers, however widely they may have travelled. From my dull and commonplace and

to a low birth rate. Now, supplied with great quantities of iron by their unremitting industry, they were moved to prodigies of multiplication.The chairman of the Dail Committee on the Condition of the Planet Eire had spoken of them scornfully as equal to mice. They were much worse. The planetary government needed at least a pied piper or two, but it tried other measures. It imported cats. Descendants of the felines of Earth still survived, but one had only to look at their frustrated, neurotic

le. He led a wicked life, and was killed by one of his own men while hunting in the forest.And Henry, the Handsome Scholar, had not only the chest of gold for his own, but he became by and by the King of England and the ruler of all the lands that his father had had in France. THE WHITE SHIP. King Henry, the Handsome Scholar, had one son, named William, whom he dearly loved. The young man was noble and brave, and every-body hoped that he would some day be the King of England. One summer Prince

he parish sexton. Bob Martin was held much in awe bytruant boys who sauntered into the churchyard on Sundays, to read thetombstones, or play leap frog over them, or climb the ivy in search ofbats or sparrows' nests, or peep into the mysterious aperture under theeastern window, which opened a dim perspective of descending stepslosing themselves among profounder darkness, where lidless coffins gapedhorribly among tattered velvet, bones, and dust, which time andmortality had strewn there. Of such

hin gold chain with an object attached to it. He glanced at the object and then took off his spectacles to examine it more narrowly. 'What's the history of this?' he asked. 'Odd enough,' was the answer. 'You know the yew thicket in the shrubbery: well, a year or two back we were cleaning out the old well that used to be in the clearing here, and what do you suppose we found?''Is it possible that you found a body?' said the visitor, with an odd feeling of nervousness. 'We did that: but what's

looking as though it had been but just torn off. One side of the paper was entirely blank -- or at least, if there ever had been any writing upon it, it had disappeared through the influence of time and damp; on the other were some blurred and indistinct characters, so faded as to be scarcely distinguishable, and, in a bold hand-writing in fresh black ink the two letters "Ra".Since the ink with which these letters were written corresponded exactly with that which I was in the habit of