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expensive litter of his hutment, follow Bones from the Devonian eras (represented by a passionate search for rare and remarkable stamps) through Cretaceous, Tertiary, and Quarternary strata of study and recreation.
    Another hut had been added to store his collection, and on its native-built shelves reposed old wireless sets that did not work and never had worked, volumes of self-improvers, piles of literature, thousands of samples ranging from linoleum to breakfast foods, boxes of scientific and quasi-scientific instruments (he took a correspondence course in mountain railway construction, although there were no mountains nearer than Sierra Leone), and rolls of electric flexes.
    “What an infernal junk shop!” said Hamilton appalled.
    He had come over to make a few caustic remarks about the key of the store-house which, as usual when Bones had its temporary custody, had been left all night in the door, thereby offering temptation to Hamilton’s Houssas, who were loyal but dishonest.
    “To your unscientific eyes, my dear old captain and comrade, yes,” said Bones quietly. “To my shrewd old optics, no. Everything there has its value, its raison d’être – which is a French expression that is Greek to you, dear old Ham – its – its requirability.”
    “What is this?” asked Hamilton, picking up a queer-looking object.
    “That,” said Bones without hesitation, “is an instrument used in wireless – it would take too long to explain, Ham. Unless you’ve got a groundin’ in science, dear old ignoramus, any explanation would be undecipherable–”
    “Unintelligible is the word you want,” said Hamilton, and read with difficulty the words stamped upon the steel side of the instrument. “‘Robinson’s Patent Safety Razor Strop’ – you don’t mean ‘wireless’ – you mean ‘hairless.’”
    “I wish to good gracious heavens you wouldn’t mess things about,” said Bones testily, as he fixed his monocle and glared at the unoffending strop.
    “The truth is, Bones,” said Hamilton when he reached the open and had drawn in long draughts of air with offensive ostentation, “you ought to burn all that rubbish. You’ll be breeding disease of some kind.”
    Bones closed his eyes and raised his eyebrows.
    “I am fightin’ disease, dear old layman,” he said gravely, and, going back to the hut, returned with a large wooden box. Holding this in the cross of his arm, he opened the lid and disclosed, lying between layers of cotton wool, a number of long, narrow, wooden cases.
    “Good Lord!” gasped Hamilton in dismay. “Are you going to do it?”
    Bones nodded even more gravely.
    “When did this come – Sanders told me nothing about it?”
    A faint and pitying smile dawned on the angular face of Bones.
    “There are some things which our revered old excellency never tells anybody,” he said gently. “You have surprised our secret, dear old Ham – may I ask you, as a man of honour an’ sensibility, dear old Peepin’ Tom, not to mention the fact that I have told you? I trust you.”
    Hamilton went back to the residency, and, in defiance of the demand for secrecy, mentioned his discovery.
    Mr Commissioner Sanders looked up from his work. “Vaccination lymph? Oh yes, it came this morning, and I sent it over to Bones. We may not want it, but Administration is worried about the outbreak in the French territory, and it may be necessary to inoculate the border people. Bones had better take charge – they can’t spare a doctor from HQ.”
    “God bless the lad!” said Hamilton in great relief. “I was afraid that I should be the goat.”
    Sanders nibbled the end of his penholder. “Bones has imagination, and I think he will want it when he comes to tackle the Lesser Isisi folk.”
    “He certainly is a ready liar,” admitted Hamilton.
    Government departments have a mania for labelling any man who occupies, temporarily or permanently, a post under their directions. There is this sense in the