In the energy of his alarm the ex-Fellow of Magdalen managed to leap
the paling of his garden. The two pursuers went over it after him like
flying birds. He fled frantically down a long lane with his two terrors
on his trail till he came to a gap in the hedge and went across a steep
meadow like the wind. The two Scotchmen, as they ran, kept up a cheery
bellowing and waved their swords. Up three slanting meadows, down four
slanting meadows on the other side, across another road, across a heath
of snapping bracken, through a wood, across another road, and to the
brink of a big pool, they pursued the flying philosopher. But when he
came to the pool his pace was so precipitate that he could not stop
it, and with a kind of lurching stagger, he fell splash into the greasy
water. Getting dripping to his feet, with the water up to his knees, the
worshipper of force and victory waded disconsolately to the other side
and drew himself on to the bank. And Turnbull sat down on the grass and
went off into reverberations of laughter. A second afterwards the most
extraordinary grimaces were seen to distort the stiff face of MacIan,
and unholy sounds came from within. He had never practised laughing, and
it hurt him very much.

VII. THE VILLAGE OF GRASSLEY-IN-THE-HOLE

At about half past one, under a strong blue sky, Turnbull got up out
of the grass and fern in which he had been lying, and his still
intermittent laughter ended in a kind of yawn.

"I'm hungry," he said shortly. "Are you?"

"I have not noticed," answered MacIan. "What are you going to do?"

"There's a village down the road, past the pool," answered Turnbull. "I
can see it from here. I can see the whitewashed walls of some cottages
and a kind of corner of the church. How jolly it all looks. It looks
so--I don't know what the word is--so sensible. Don't fancy I'm under
any illusions about Arcadian virtue and the innocent villagers. Men make
beasts of themselves there with drink, but they don't deliberately make
devils of themselves with mere talking. They kill wild animals in
the wild woods, but they don't kill cats to the God of Victory. They
don't----" He broke off and suddenly spat on the ground.

"Excuse me," he said; "it was ceremonial. One has to get the taste out
of one's mouth."

"The taste of what?" asked MacIan.

"I don't know the exact name for it," replied Turnbull. "Perhaps it is
the South Sea Islands, or it may be Magdalen College."

There