.
The Tenantry (to whom Sir Godfrey had extended a very hospitable
bidding to come and they should find standing-room and good meat and
beer in the court-yard) went nearly mad. From every quarter of the
horizon they came plunging and ploughing along. The sun blazed down
out of a sky whence a universal radiance seemed to beat upon the
blinding white. Could you have mounted up bird-fashion over the
country, you would have seen the Manor like the centre of some great
wheel, with narrow tracks pointing in to it from the invisible rim of
a circle, paths wide and narrow, converging at the gate, trodden
across the new snow from anywhere and everywhere; and moving along
these like ants, all the inhabitants for miles around. And through
the wide splendour of winter no wind blowing, but the sound of chiming
bells far and near, clear frozen drops of music in the brittle air.

Old Gaffer Piers, the ploughman, stumped along, "pretty well for
eighty, thanky," as he somewhat snappishly answered to the neighbours
who out-walked him on the road. They would get there first.

"Wonderful old man," they said as they went on their way, and quickly
resumed their speculations upon the Dragon's capture. Farmer John
Stiles came driving his ox-team and snuffling, for it was pretty cold,
and his handkerchief at home. Upon his wagon on every part, like
swallows, hung as many of his relations as could get on. His mother,
who had been Lucy Baker, and grandmother Cecilia Kempe, and a litter
of cousin Thorpes. But his step-father Lewis Gay and the children of
the half-blood were not asked to ride; farmer Stiles had bitterly
resented the second marriage. This family knew all the particulars
concerning the Dragon, for they had them from the cook's second cousin
who was courting Bridget Stiles. They knew how Saint George had waked
Father Anselm up and put him on a white horse, and how the Abbot had
thus been able to catch the Dragon by his tail in the air just as he
was flying away with Miss Elaine, and how at that the white horse had
turned into a young man who had been bewitched by the Dragon, and was
going to marry Miss Elaine immediately.

On the front steps, shaking hands with each person who came, was Sir
Godfrey. He had dressed himself excellently for the occasion;
something between a heavy father and an old beau, with a beautiful
part down the back of his head where the hair was. Geoffrey stood
beside him.

"My son-in-law that's to be," Sir G