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Tales of the Long Bow

those new laws and a few more. Could you let me look at that cutting for a moment?"

Hood handed it to him and he nodded, saying:

"Yes; I was arrested for that."

"Arrested for what?"

"Arrested for being a rich and respectable old lady," answered Hilary Pierce; "but I managed to escape that time. It was a fine sight to see the old lady clear a hedge and skedaddle across a meadow."

Hood looked at him under bended brows and his mouth began to work.

"But what's all this about the old lady having a pug or a pet or something? "y

"Well, it was very nearly a pug," said Pierce in a dispassionate manner. "I pointed out to everybody that it was, as it were, an approximate pug. I asked if it was just to punish me for a small mistake in spelling."

"I begin to understand," said Hood. "You were again smuggling swine down to your precious Blue Boar, and thought you could rush the frontier in very rapid cars."

"Yes," replied the smuggler placidly. "We were quite literally Road-Hogs. I thought at first of dressing the pigs up as millionaires and members of Parliament; but when you come to

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