he will waylay me. He will come billowing up to me. . . .



He will tell me over again all about it, how it feels, how it

doesn't feel, how he sometimes hopes it is passing off a little.

And always somewhere in that fat, abundant discourse he will say,

"The secret's keeping, eh? If any one knew of it--I should be

so ashamed. . . . Makes a fellow look such a fool, you know.

Crawling about on a ceiling and all that. . . ."



And now to elude Pyecraft, occupying, as he does, an admirable

strategic position between me and the door.





5. MR. SKELMERSDALE IN FAIRYLAND



"There's a man in that shop," said the Doctor, "who has been in

Fairyland."



"Nonsense!" I said, and stared back at the shop. It was the usual

village shop, post-office, telegraph wire on its brow, zinc pans and

brushes outside, boots, shirtings, and potted meats in the window.

"Tell me about it," I said, after a pause.



"_I_ don't know," said the Doctor. "He's an ordinary sort of lout--

Skelmersdale is his name. But everybody about here believes it

like Bible truth."



I reverted presently to the topic.



"I know nothing about it," said the Doctor, "and I don't WANT to know.

I attended him for a broken finger--Married and Single cricket match--

and that's when I struck the nonsense. That's all. But it shows you

the sort of stuff I have to deal with, anyhow, eh? Nice to get

modern sanitary ideas into a people like this!"



"Very," I said in a mildly sympathetic tone, and he went on to tell

me about that business of the Bonham drain. Things of that kind,

I observe, are apt to weigh on the minds of Medical Officers of Health.

I was as sympathetic as I knew how, and when he called the Bonham

people "asses," I said they were "thundering asses," but even that

did not allay him.



Afterwards, later in the summer, an urgent desire to seclude myself,

while finishing my chapter on Spiritual Pathology--it was really,

I believe, stiffer to write than it is to read--took me to Bignor.

I lodged at a farmhouse, and presently found myself outside that

little general shop again, in search of tobacco. "Skelmersdale,"

said I to myself at the sight of it, and went in.



I was served by a short, but shapely, young man, with a fair downy



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