“‘I’d make an effort,’ said he, with a trace of embarrassment, ‘but my wife thinks that we had better plead guilty and let it go. That kind of thing doesn’t interest me so much as it does her.’
“‘After all,’ I answered, by way of consolation, ‘if you think it’s like to do you any harm, it doesn’t need to get out. I shall respect your confidence.’
“‘Too late!’ his wife exclaimed. ‘The facts have been cabled to America.’
“I was writing letters in my room, next day, when Harry interrupted me with a hurried entrance. He locked the door inside, and in a kind of playful silence 25 drew from under his rain-coat, and deposited on my table, a human skull.
“‘The Bishop of St. Clare,’ he whispered, in that curious dialect which I shall not try to imitate.
“‘He isn’t looking very well,’ I said, not knowing what he meant.
“‘This is the Bishop’s head––the Bishop of St. Clare,’ Harry whispered again. ‘He was one of our ancestors––by Jove!’
“‘Is that all that was the matter with him?’ I asked.
“‘No; his epitaph says that he died of a fever in 1712.’
“‘How did you get hold of his head?’ I asked. ‘Win it in a raffle?’