I hardly can bring myself to part with this story, it has been
such a private joy to me. Moreover, that I have lain awake in the
night to laugh over it is no guarantee of your being passably
amused. Yourselves, I dare say, have known what it is to awake in
irrepressible mirth from a dream which next morning proved to be flat
and unconvincing. Well, this my pet story has some of the qualities
of a dream; being absurd, for instance, and almost incredible, and
even a trifle inhuman. After all, I had better change my mind, and
tell you another--

But no; I will risk it, and you shall have it, just as it befel.


I had taken an afternoon's holiday to make a pilgrimage: my goal
being a small parish church that lies remote from the railway, five
good miles from the tiniest of country stations; my purpose to
inspect--or say, rather, to contemplate--a Norman porch, for which it
ought to be widely famous. (Here let me say that I have an unlearned
passion for Norman architecture--to enjoy it merely, not to write
about it.)

To carry me on my first stage I had taken a crawling local train
that dodged its way somehow between the regular expresses and the
"excursions" that invade our Delectable Duchy from June to October.
The season was high midsummer, the afternoon hot and drowsy with
scents of mown hay; and between the rattle of the fast trains it
seemed that we, native denizens of the Duchy, careless of
observation or applause, were executing a _tour de force_ in that