old house
and has the black hair and pale, clear-cut face of the whole family.
I cannot but refer it to vanity that he should heighten his personal
advantages with black velvet or a red cross of considerable ostentation,
and certainly--but I digress.

"A fog was coming up the street, and that last lost lamp-post
faded behind us in a way that certainly depressed the mind.
The large man in front of us looked larger and larger in the haze.
He did not turn round, but he said with his huge back to us,
`All that talking's no good; we want a little practical Socialism.'

"`I quite agree,' said Percy; `but I always like to understand things
in theory before I put them into practice.'

"`Oh, you just leave that to me,' said the practical Socialist,
or whatever he was, with the most terrifying vagueness.
`I have a way with me. I'm a Permeator.'

"I could not imagine what he meant, but my companion laughed,
so I was sufficiently reassured to continue the unaccountable journey
for the present. It led us through most singular ways; out of the lane,
where we were already rather cramped, into a paved passage,
at the end of which we passed through a wooden gate left open.
We then found ourselves, in the increasing darkness and vapour,
crossing what appeared to be a beaten path across a kitchen garden.
I called out to the enormous person going on in front, but he answered
obscurely that it was a short cut.

"I was just repeating my very natural doubt to my clerical companion
when I was brought up against a short ladder, apparently leading
to a higher level of road. My thoughtless colleague ran up it so
quickly that I could not do otherwise than follow as best I could.
The path on which I then planted my feet was quite unprecedentedly narrow.
I had never had to walk along a thoroughfare so exiguous.
Along one side of it grew what, in the dark and density of air,
I first took to be some short, strong thicket of shrubs. Then I saw
that they were not short shrubs; they were the tops of tall trees.
I, an English gentleman and clergyman of the Church of England--I was
walking along the top of a garden wall like a tom cat.

"I am glad to say that I stopped within my first five steps,
and let loose my just reprobation, balancing myself as best I
could all the time.

"`It's a right-of-way,' declared my indefensible informant.
`It's closed to traffic once in a hundred years.'

"`Mr. Percy, Mr. Percy!' I called out; `you are not go