energy. "The Bishop's
horse--in the stable!"

They ran wildly to the rear quarters of the Home, where they found the
Bishop's famous charger whinneying in his stall. All three leaped upon
his back. In the confusion, amid the screams of the tortured inmates
and the cruel cries of the invading chuffs, they made good their escape.

Every one of the wretched inmates captured at the psychic carouse was
immediately sentenced to six months' hard listening on the Chautauqua
circuit. But even during this brutal punishment their memories returned
with tenderest reminiscence to the experience of that afternoon. As one
of them said, "it was a real treat." And although Quimbleton had
plainly stated the relation in which he stood to Theodolinda Chuff, she
had no less than two hundred and ten proposals of marriage, by mail,
from those who had attended the seance.

CHAPTER VII

THE DECANTERBURY PILGRIMS

Through a dreary waste of devastated country a little group of refugees
plodded in silence. All about them lay fields and orchards which had
been torn and uprooted as though by some unbelievable whirlwind. At a
watering trough along the road they halted, facing the sign:

COMPULSORY DRINKING STATION

Adults, 1 quart
Children, 1 pint

THIRST FORBIDDEN BETWEEN HERE AND THE NEXT STATION

Under the eye of an armed chuff, who watched them suspiciously, the
wretched wanderers drank the water in silence, but without enthusiasm.
Then they shuffled on down the road.

At the front of the small procession a slender girl, in a much-stained
sports suit, rode on a tall black horse. Beside the horse trudged a
bulky man in a grotesque garb of dirty lavender quilting. A matted
whisk of coarse beard drooped from his chin, but his blue eyes burned
brightly in his sunburnt face. Over his shoulder he carried a six foot
length of brass railing, a small folding table, and a shabby knapsack.

Behind the horse limped a lean, dyspeptic-colored individual in a Palm
Beach suit that would have been a social death-warrant on the shining
sands of its name-place. There is no form of sartorialism that takes on
such utter humility as a Palm Beach suit gone wrong. This particular
vestment was spotted with ink, with mud, with fruit-juices, with every
kind of stain; it was punctured with perforations that might have been
due to fallen tobacco tinder. The individual within this travesty of
clothing was painfully propelling a wheelba