Vendigeid. And I thought that that was the first and last
discussion of "The Bowmen". But in a few days from its publication the
editor of _The Occult Review_ wrote to me. He wanted to know whether
the story had any foundation in fact. I told him that it had no
foundation in fact of any kind or sort; I forget whether I added that
it had no foundation in rumour but I should think not, since to the
best of my belief there were no rumours of heavenly interposition in
existence at that time. Certainly I had heard of none. Soon afterwards
the editor of _Light_ wrote asking a like question, and I made him a
like reply. It seemed to me that I had stifled any "Bowmen" mythos in
the hour of its birth.

A month or two later, I received several requests from editors of
parish magazines to reprint the story. I--or, rather, my editor--
readily gave permission; and then, after another month or two, the
conductor of one of these magazines wrote to me, saying that the
February issue containing the story had been sold out, while there was
still a great demand for it. Would I allow them to reprint "The
Bowmen" as a pamphlet, and would I write a short preface giving the
exact authorities for the story? I replied that they might reprint in
pamphlet form with all my heart, but that I could not give my
authorities, since I had none, the tale being pure invention. The
priest wrote again, suggesting--to my amazement--that I must be
mistaken, that the main "facts" of "The Bowmen" must be true, that my
share in the matter must surely have been confined to the elaboration
and decoration of a veridical history. It seemed that my light fiction
had been accepted by the congregation of this particular church as the
solidest of facts; and it was then that it began to dawn on me that if
I had failed in the art of letters, I had succeeded, unwittingly, in
the art of deceit. This happened, I should think, some time in April,
and the snowball of rumour that was then set rolling has been rolling
ever since, growing bigger and bigger, till it is now swollen to a
monstrous size.

It was at about this period that variants of my tale began to be told
as authentic histories. At first, these tales betrayed their relation
to their original. In several of them the vegetarian restaurant
appeared, and St. George was the chief character. In one case an
officer--name and address missing--said that there was a portrait of
St. George in a certain London restaurant, a