ots,
carry a bag of solid lead, and the thing is done! Instead of being a
prisoner here you may go abroad again, Pyecraft; you may travel--"

A still happier idea came to me. "You need never fear a shipwreck.
All you need do is just slip off some or all of your clothes, take the
necessary amount of luggage in your hand, and float up in the air--"

In his emotion he dropped the tack-hammer within an ace of my head. "By
Jove!" he said, "I shall be able to come back to the club again."

The thing pulled me up short. "By Jove!" I said faintly. "Yes. Of
course--you will."

He did. He does. There he sits behind me now, stuffing--as I
live!--a third go of buttered tea-cake. And no one in the whole world
knows--except his housekeeper and me--that he weighs practically
nothing; that he is a mere boring mass of assimilatory matter, mere
clouds in clothing, niente, nefas, the most inconsiderable of men. There
he sits watching until I have done this writing. Then, if he can, he
will waylay me. He will come billowing up to me....

He will tell me over again all about it, how it feels, how it doesn't
feel, how he sometimes hopes it is passing off a little. And always
somewhere in that fat, abundant discourse he will say, "The secret's
keeping, eh? If any one knew of it--I should be so ashamed.... Makes a
fellow look such a fool, you know. Crawling about on a ceiling and all
that...."

And now to elude Pyecraft, occupying, as he does, an admirable strategic
position between me and the door.

5. MR. SKELMERSDALE IN FAIRYLAND

"There's a man in that shop," said the Doctor, "who has been in
Fairyland."

"Nonsense!" I said, and stared back at the shop. It was the usual
village shop, post-office, telegraph wire on its brow, zinc pans and
brushes outside, boots, shirtings, and potted meats in the window. "Tell
me about it," I said, after a pause.

"_I_ don't know," said the Doctor. "He's an ordinary sort of
lout--Skelmersdale is his name. But everybody about here believes it
like Bible truth."

I reverted presently to the topic.

"I know nothing about it," said the Doctor, "and I don't WANT to know. I
attended him for a broken finger--Married and Single cricket match--and
that's when I struck the nonsense. That's all. But it shows you the sort
of stuff I have to deal with, anyhow, eh? Nice to get modern sanitary
ideas into a people like this!"

"Very," I said in a mildly sympathetic tone, and he went on to tell me
ab