worn on
entering Erewhon nearly twenty years previously.

The watch, however, was a very small matter; the dress of these two men
(for there were only two) was far more disconcerting. They were not in
the Erewhonian costume. The one was dressed like an Englishman or would-
be Englishman, while the other was wearing the same kind of clothes but
turned the wrong way round, so that when his face was towards my father
his body seemed to have its back towards him, and _vice verso_. The
man's head, in fact, appeared to have been screwed right round; and yet
it was plain that if he were stripped he would be found built like other
people.

What could it all mean? The men were about fifty years old. They were
well-to-do people, well clad, well fed, and were felt instinctively by my
father to belong to the academic classes. That one of them should be
dressed like a sensible Englishman dismayed my father as much as that the
other should have a watch, and look as if he had just broken out of
Bedlam, or as King Dagobert must have looked if he had worn all his
clothes as he is said to have worn his breeches. Both wore their clothes
so easily--for he who wore them reversed had evidently been measured with
a view to this absurd fashion--that it was plain their dress was
habitual.

My father was alarmed as well as astounded, for he saw that what little
plan of a campaign he had formed must be reconstructed, and he had no
idea in what direction his next move should be taken; but he was a ready
man, and knew that when people have taken any idea into their heads, a
little confirmation will fix it. A first idea is like a strong seedling;
it will grow if it can.

In less time than it will have taken the reader to get through the last
foregoing paragraphs, my father took up the cue furnished him by the
second speaker.

"Yes," said he, going boldly up to this gentleman, "I am one of the
rangers, and it is my duty to ask you what you are doing here upon the
King's preserves."

"Quite so, my man," was the rejoinder. "We have been to see the statues
at the head of the pass, and have a permit from the Mayor of Sunch'ston
to enter upon the preserves. We lost ourselves in the thick fog, both
going and coming back."

My father inwardly blessed the fog. He did not catch the name of the
town, but presently found that it was commonly pronounced as I have
written it.

"Be pleased to show it me," said my father in his politest manne