They met at Krupp and Mason's, musical-instrument-makers, of Little Britain, E.C., where Walter had been employed two years, and then came Annie to typewrite, and be serviceable.

They began to "go out" together after six o'clock; and when Mrs. Evans, Annie's mamma, lost her lodger, Annie mentioned it, and Walter went to live with them at No. 13 Culford Road, N.; by which time Annie and Walter might almost be said to have been engaged. His salary, however, was only thirty shillings a week.

He was the thorough Cockney, Walter; a well-set-up person of thirty, strong-shouldered, with a square brow, a moustache, and black acne-specks in his nose and pale face.

It was on the night of his arrival at No. 13, that he for the first time saw Rachel, Annie's younger sister. Both girls, in fact, were named "Rachel"--after a much-mourned mother of Mrs.

Evans'; but Annie Rachel was called "Annie," and Mary Rachel was called "Rachel." Rachel helped Walter at the handle of his box to the top-back room, and here, in the lamplight he was able to see that she was a tallish girl, with hair almost black, and with a sprinkling of freckles on her very white, thin nose, on the tip of which stood collected, usually, some little sweats. She was thin-faced, and her top teeth projected a little so that her lips only closed with effort, she not so pretty as pink-and-white little Annie, though one could guess, at a glance, that she was a person more to be respected.

"What do you think of him?" said Annie, meeting Rachel as she came down.

"He seems a nice fellow," Rachel said: "rather goodlooking. And strong in the back, you bet."

CHAPTER I. - THE TIGER-HUNTERS

---- THIS name of "Tiger-hunters," taken by the well-known Society started in Tokio four months before the war was borrowed from a gang of Korean bandits with whom the Japanese society had nothing to do. There are no tigers in Japan, but there are in Korea; and the Japanese have a saying that " to fight with Koreans is to fight with tigers," because all the Koreans run away, and only tigers remain to be dealt with.

--- These Japanese "Tiger-hunters" (Tora-gari) were a half-secret body, whose aims seem to have been at first social rather than political: for, as we know, Japan seethes with the thoughts of our Western Socialists, and is big with change. However, as the war went on, the " Tiger-hunters," remaining social, became political also, like the " Boxers " of China. With that upstartness of all young Japanese things, the " Tiger-hunters " took upon themselves to have their say even in the strategy of the war; no interest of the nation remained beyond their meddling; and like that " Jacobin Club " which started as a debating-society during the Revolution, but soon became the voice of France, so with the " Tiger-hunters."

--- Among them were men of all classes, from Daimio's son to seller of straw-sandals; they spread into branches as a gourd grows; formed vigilance committees, correspondence-committees; admission to membership was made with a rite; their headquarters came to be an old temple-grove among the hills round Nagasaki; and the meetings there were often at night.

--- Seven "Tiger-hunters" met in the Japanese restaurant in London on the night of the nth of January, when the war was a year old, among them being Baron M- , lately of the General Staff, and now President of the Nagasaki branch of the "Tiger-hunters."

--- Hardly a reader will know this restaurant; just where it is one may not tell: but it is in a residential block in Bloomsbury. One passes down a corridor, through a courtyard, up a stair, and knocks at a door on which are painted some Japanese words. It is kept by a French girl and a hobbling old Jap. There are two bare rooms in which one sits and in which one eats; and the electric light over the eating-table looks down upon the oddest way of dining- as it were the grimace of a dinner, dinner and light together making a symbol of New Japan, East and West met at last, and jigging together to the tune of the funniest ominous yankee-doodle-doo.