which lies beyond the realms of speech.
He simply stood quite still and gazed at the bow-legged dwarf, which,
in its turn, continued to gaze savagely through the gigantic instrument
into the area. Not for perhaps three or four minutes did the Prophet
realise that this dwarf was merely an ingeniously shortened form of Mr.
Ferdinand, who, with his legs very wide apart, and making two accurate
right angles at their respective knee-joints, his head thrown well
back, and his arms arranged in two perfect capital V's, with the elbows
pointing directly at the walls on either side of him, had been busily
engaged for the last hour and a quarter in trying to focus firstly the
Lord Chancellor's house on the opposite side of the square, and secondly
the pleasant-looking second-cook in it. That his chivalrous efforts had
not yet been crowned with complete success will be understood when we
say that he had seen during his first half-hour of contemplation nothing
at all, during his second half-hour the left-hand top star of the Great
Bear, and finally the fourth spike from the end of the iron railing
which enclosed the square garden, at which he had been gazing closely
for precisely fifteen minutes and a half when the Prophet darted into
the pantry.

Having at length recovered from his shock of surprise sufficiently to
realise that the enormous and immobile dwarf was Mr. Ferdinand, and that
Mr. Ferdinand was not yet aware of his presence, the Prophet resolved
to beat a rapid and noiseless retreat. He carried this resolve into
execution by turning sharply round, knocking his head against a plate
chest, firing the George the Third candlestick into the passage, and
letting the planisphere go into the china jar of "Butler's own special
pomade" which Mr. Ferdinand kept always open for use upon the pantry
table.

To say that Mr. Ferdinand ceased from looking through the telescope for
the Lord Chancellor's second-cook at this juncture would, perhaps, not
convey quite a fair idea of the activity which he could on occasion
display even at his somewhat advanced age. It might be more just to
state that, without wasting any precious time in useless elongation, he
described an exceedingly rapid circular movement, still preserving the
shortened form of himself which had so deceived and startled his master,
and brought his eye from the orifice of the telescope to a level with
the Prophet's knees exactly at the moment when the Prophet rebounded
from