two corners the place has almost the look
of Venice. It was so especially in the case with which we
are concerned, in which a few flying buttresses or airy ribs of stone
sprang across a strip of water to connect Brakespeare College
with the house of the Warden of Brakespeare.

"The country around these colleges is flat; but it does not
seem flat when one is thus in the midst of the colleges.
For in these flat fens there are always wandering lakes and lingering
rivers of water. And these always change what might have been
a scheme of horizontal lines into a scheme of vertical lines.
Wherever there is water the height of high buildings is doubled,
and a British brick house becomes a Babylonian tower.
In that shining unshaken surface the houses hang head
downwards exactly to their highest or lowest chimney.
The coral-coloured cloud seen in that abyss is as far
below the world as its original appears above it.
Every scrap of water is not only a window but a skylight.
Earth splits under men's feet into precipitous aerial perspectives,
into which a bird could as easily wing its way as--"

Dr. Cyrus Pym rose in protest. The documents he had put
in evidence had been confined to cold affirmation of fact.
The defence, in a general way, had an indubitable right to put
their case in their own way, but all this landscape gardening
seemed to him (Dr. Cyrus Pym) to be not up to the business.
"Will the leader of the defence tell me," he asked, "how it can
possibly affect this case, that a cloud was cor'l-coloured,
or that a bird could have winged itself anywhere?"

"Oh, I don't know," said Michael, lifting himself lazily;
"you see, you don't know yet what our defence is.
Till you know that, don't you see, anything may be relevant.
Why, suppose," he said suddenly, as if an idea had struck him,
"suppose we wanted to prove the old Warden colour-blind.
Suppose he was shot by a black man with white hair, when he
thought he was being shot by a white man with yellow hair!
To ascertain if that cloud was really and truly coral-coloured
might be of the most massive importance."

He paused with a seriousness which was hardly generally shared,
and continued with the same fluency: "Or suppose we wanted to
maintain that the Warden committed suicide--that he just got Smith
to hold the pistol as Brutus's slave held the sword. Why, it would
make all the difference whether the Warden could see himself plain
in still water. Still water has