t to be cooked and dressed and decorated for them. If these
things are done to nature, it is nature no longer that you have, but
something Frenchified. Those French are for trimming Neptune's beard!
Only wait, and you are sure to find variety in nature, more than you may
like. You will find it in Neptune. What say you to a breach of the
sea-wall, and an inundation of the aromatic grass-flat extending from the
house on the beach to the tottering terraces, villas, cottages: and
public-house transformed by its ensign to Hotel, along the frontage of
the town? Such an event had occurred of old, and had given the house on
the beach the serious shaking great Neptune in his wrath alone can give.
But many years had intervened. Groynes had been run down to intercept him
and divert him. He generally did his winter mischief on a mill and salt
marshes lower westward. Mr. Tinman had always been extremely zealous in
promoting the expenditure of what moneys the town had to spare upon the
protection of the shore, as it were for the propitiation or defiance of
the sea-god. There was a kindly joke against him an that subject among
brother jurats. He retorted with the joke, that the first thing for
Englishmen to look to were England's defences.

But it will not do to be dwelling too fondly on our eras of peace, for
which we make such splendid sacrifices. Peace, saving for the advent of a
German band, which troubled the repose of the town at intervals, had
imparted to the inhabitants of Crikswich, within and without, the
likeness to its most perfect image, together, it must be confessed, with
a degree of nervousness that invested common events with some of the
terrors of the Last Trump, when one night, just upon the passing of the
vernal equinox, something happened.

CHAPTER II

A carriage Stopped short in the ray of candlelight that was fitfully and
feebly capering on the windy blackness outside the open workshop of
Crickledon, the carpenter, fronting the sea-beach. Mr. Tinnnan's house
was inquired for. Crickledon left off planing; at half-sprawl over the
board, he bawled out, "Turn to the right; right ahead; can't mistake it."
He nodded to one of the cronies intent on watching his labours: "Not
unless they mean to be bait for whiting-pout. Who's that for Tinman, I
wonder?" The speculations of Crickledon's friends were lost in the scream
of the plane.

One cast an eye through the door and observed that the carriage was there
stil