"Bride-show," and afterwards at the hunting-party, contains no account
of the lovers' escape and voyage, or of the miracle which brought them
comfort at the last. Indeed, Master Kurt contradicts the common tale in
many ways, but above all in his ending, wherein (although he narrates a
miracle) I find him worthy of belief.



SINDBAD ON BURRATOR.


I heard this story in a farmhouse upon Dartmoor, and I give it in the
words of the local doctor who told it. We were a reading-party of
three undergraduates and a Christ Church don. The don had slipped on a
boulder, two days before, while fishing the river Meavy, and sprained
his ankle; hence Dr. Miles's visit. The two had made friends over the
don's fly-book and the discovery that what the doctor did not know about
Dartmoor trout was not worth knowing; hence an invitation to extend his
visit over dinner. At dinner the talk diverged from sport to the
ancient tin-works, stone circles, camps and cromlechs on the tors about
us, and from there to touch speculatively on the darker side of the old
religions: hence at length the doctor's story, which he told over the
pipes and whisky, leaning his arms upon the table and gazing at it
rather than at us, as though drawing his memories out of depths below
its polished surface.


It must be thirty--yes, thirty--years ago (he said) since I met the man,
on a bright November morning, when the Dartmoor hounds were drawing
Burrator Wood. Burrator House in those days belonged to the Rajah