CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE




THE RUNIC PLASM





   Ambiguous, Childe Roger rees the rune of Unna Klopstock. Mobile Marry, but omen. ``The grey knight's at the ferry; wink.'' He signed, pressed the plasm to his alb, pectoral-wise, with a norm that made groined transept and waly welkin giddy as the long-haired shagsters of Boeotia. Then clasps he speron to palfrey, with whinnying jennet lank adown the wet west wind. I now omit many adventures, but he gets to the ferry at last. The Grey Knight Is Not There. There is however an unambiguous rune, reading, in the character of Honorius: SVXIIV. The II is a Roman Numeral; now it's quite easy, isn't it?


   But when Childe Roger brings at last the mummied hand --  that had wrought such fearful mischief -- to the Master Egyptologist, that person pales anaemically, glares goitrously, yammers once, and then goes raving mad. At the same moment the clock of Big Ben strikes Thirteen (don't you think? Something ominous and totally disconnected). Of course, Childe Roger was never the same man after this adventure of the runic plasm; he retired to his castle -- but why did he always order Dinner for Two, even when most alone? I doubt if even the old steward knows about this. He is palsied and hoar already, on account of the affair of the bedesman and the beldame, I suppose. Don't let us load any more trouble on to the back of the poor old steward! Whether Childe Roger's wife was a gorilla (thanks to clever chaperones this can easily be done now-a-days) or whether the First-Born son of the Bloxams is always a seal or a calf, as so often happens in the best-regulated old Scottish families, I shall leave, dear reader, to your imagination. You see, it would be saving of much trouble to leave the whole damned thing! I'm going on with this novellisim in the grand old way. SVXIIV. (``Same to you, only louder,'' cries the Bunyip girl.)