'Just a poor old fairy,' says she; 'Old Nancy.

She's a poor old thing; been here ever so long; lost her husband and her children; it's bad to be left like that, all alone.

I leave a bit o' cake on the table for her, and sometimes she fetches it, and sometimes she don't." THE BLACK DOG AND THE THUMBLESS HAND [Some years ago I published in a volume of tales called The Wrong Paradise, a paper styled "My Friend the Beach-comber".

This contained genuine adventures of a kinsman, my oldest and most intimate friend, who has passed much of his life in the Pacific, mainly in a foreign colony, and in the wild New Hebrides.

My friend is a man of education, an artist, and a student of anthropology and ethnology.
Engaged on a work of scientific research, he has not committed any of his innumerable adventures, warlike or wandering, to print.