rrow, in which rode (not
without complaint) a substantial woman and a baby. An older child
trailed from the Palm Beach coat-tail.

These jovial vagabonds, as the reader will have suspected, were no
other than Theodolinda Chuff, Virgil Quimbleton, and the family of
Bleaks.

Affairs had gone steadily from bad to worse. After the incident--or, as
some blasphemously called it, the miracle--at Cana, Bishop Chuff had
commenced ruthless warfare. Enraged beyond control by the perfidy of
his daughter, he had sent out the armies of the Pan-Antis to wreak
vengeance on every human enterprise that could be suspected of
complicity in the matter of fermentation. Not only had the countryside
been laid waste, but the printing press had been abolished and all
publishing trades were now a thing of the past. This, of course, had
thrown Dunraven Bleak out of a job. He had retrieved his wife and
children from the seashore, and in company with Quimbleton and Miss
Chuff, and the noble and faithful horse John Barleycorn, they had led a
nomad existence for weeks, flying from bands of pursuing chuffs, and
bravely preaching their illicit gospel of good cheer in the face of
terrible dangers.

The girl, who was indeed the Jeanne d'Arc of their cause, was their
sole means of subsistence. It was her psychic powers that made it
possible for them, in a furtive way, to give their little
entertainments. Their method was, on reaching a village where there
were no chuff troops, to distribute certain handbills which Bleak had
been able to get printed by stealth. These read thus:

THE SIX QUIMBLETONS or The Decanterbury Pilgrims In Their Artistic
Revival Of Old and Entertaining Customs, Tableaux Vivants Vanished
Arts, Folklore Games and Conjuring Tricks Such as The Drinking of
Healths, Toasts, Nosepainting, The Lifted Elbow, Let's Match For It,
Say When, Light or Dark? and This One's On Me. COMMUNION WITH DEPARTED
SPIRITS Please Do Not Leave Before the Hat Goes Round

Having taken their station in some not too prominent place, Bleak would
mount the wheelbarrow and play Coming Through the Rye on a jew's-harp.
This, his sole musical accomplishment, was exceedingly distasteful to
him: all his training had been in the anonymity of a newspaper office,
and he felt his public humiliation bitterly.

When a crowd had gathered, Quimbleton would ascend the barrow and make
a brief speech (of a highly inflammatory and treasonable nature) after
which he would set u