decorated with
a big public house, a butcher's shop, a small public house, a sweetstuff
shop, a very small public house, and an illegible signpost. The lower of
the two roads boasted a horse-pond, a post office, a gentleman's garden
with very high hedges, a microscopically small public house, and two
cottages. Where all the people lived who supported all the public houses
was in this, as in many other English villages, a silent and smiling
mystery. The church lay a little above and beyond the village, with a
square grey tower dominating it decisively.

But even the church was scarcely so central and solemn an institution
as the large public house, the Valencourt Arms. It was named after some
splendid family that had long gone bankrupt, and whose seat was occupied
by a man who had invented a hygienic bootjack; but the unfathomable
sentimentalism of the English people insisted in regarding the Inn,
the seat and the sitter in it, as alike parts of a pure and marmoreal
antiquity. And in the Valencourt Arms festivity itself had some
solemnity and decorum; and beer was drunk with reverence, as it ought to
be. Into the principal parlour of this place entered two strangers, who
found themselves, as is always the case in such hostels, the object,
not of fluttered curiosity or pert inquiry, but of steady, ceaseless,
devouring ocular study. They had long coats down to their heels, and
carried under each coat something that looked like a stick. One was
tall and dark, the other short and red-haired. They ordered a pot of ale
each.

"MacIan," said Turnbull, lifting his tankard, "the fool who wanted us to
be friends made us want to go on fighting. It is only natural that
the fool who wanted us to fight should make us friendly. MacIan, your
health!"

Dusk was already dropping, the rustics in the tavern were already
lurching and lumbering out of it by twos and threes, crying clamorous
good nights to a solitary old toper that remained, before MacIan and
Turnbull had reached the really important part of their discussion.

MacIan wore an expression of sad bewilderment not uncommon with him. "I
am to understand, then," he said, "that you don't believe in nature."

"You may say so in a very special and emphatic sense," said Turnbull.
"I do not believe in nature, just as I do not believe in Odin. She is a
myth. It is not merely that I do not believe that nature can guide us.
It is that I do not believe that nature exists."

"Exists?"