pent two days in London. To him, the road on which he looked out for so
many hours each day was one of the tentacles thrown out by the mighty
City to drag the sons of Nature into its gluttonous maw.

"It ain't got me, 'owever," he reflected, as he contentedly wagged his
tails; "but as for 'Enry, why, 'oo knows?"

And really, what London would have done with Edward John we cannot
guess, nor have we at present any idea of what it will do with 'Enry.

At this particular moment you would scarcely have credited the
postmaster-bookseller-tobacconist with such philosophic reflections; for
he seemed to be chiefly interested in watching with a critical eye a
dawdling creature by the name of Miffin, the inefficient tailor across
the way.

Edward John pursed his lips and flapped his coat-tails in stern
disapproval of that sluggard's method of removing the single shutter
which covered his window as a protection from the sun's rays, rather
than a barrier to thieves, the latter being unknown in Hampton. Miffin
made the mere act of withdrawing a bolt a function of five or ten
minutes' duration, exchanging courtesies with every possible creature in
the neighbourhood, from schoolboys to cats, while engaged in the
operation. He would even call across to Edward John on the state of the
day, and secretly wonder when the postmaster ever did a stroke of work,
while in the mind of the latter certain wise maxims about ants and
sluggards from the Book of Proverbs were suggesting themselves as
peculiarly applicable to Mr. Miffin.

Presently, as Edward John turned his glance along the village street
towards the Parish Church, which sat on a leafy knoll to the west, with
a reproving eye on all Hampton, he saw the Rev. Godfrey Needham
hastening eastward at a brisk pace.

The sight was no unusual one. Mr. Needham never moved unless in a whirl,
the looseness of his clerical garb helping him to create quite a little
gust of energy as he hurried by with his good-hearted greetings to his
admiring parishioners. Such haste in a man of sixty was unaccountable,
especially when one was fully alive to his appearance. He looked as if
he had suddenly awakened after going to sleep a century before, and was
in a hurry to make up lost time. Thin-faced, with prominent nose, and
eyes red at the rims, blinking behind spectacles; he wore a rusty
clerical hat and clothes of ancient cut and material, his trousers
terminating a good three inches above his low shoes