. The work of decay goes on, and the bones they fall into
the sea. Sometimes, sailing off shore, you may see a shank or an arm
protrudin' like a pigeon's leg from a pie. But the wind or the weather
takes it and it goes. There's more to follow yet. Look at 'em! look at
these bents! Every one a grave, with a skelington in it. The wear and
tear from the edge will reach each one in turn, and then the last of the
ungodly will have ceased from the earth."

"And what became of your grandfather?"

"My grandfather? There were something happened made him renounce the
devil. He died one of the elect. His youth were heedless and
unregenerate; but, 'tis said, after he were turned thirty he never smiled
agen. There was a reason. Did I ever tell you the story of Dark Dignum
and Exciseman Jones?"

WILLIAM TYRWHITT'S "COPY"

This is the story of William Tyrwhitt, who went to King's Cobb for rest
and change, and, with the latter, at least, was so far accommodated
as for a time to get beyond himself and into regions foreign to his
experiences or his desires. And for this condition of his I hold myself
something responsible, inasmuch as it was my inquisitiveness was the
means of inducing him to an exploration, of which the result, with its
measure of weirdness, was for him alone. But, it seems, I was appointed
an agent of the unexplainable without my knowledge, and it was simply my
misfortune to find my first unwitting commission in the selling of a
friend.

I was for a few days, about the end of a particular July, lodged in that
little old seaboard town of Dorset that is called King's Cobb. Thither
there came to me one morning a letter from William Tyrwhitt, the
polemical journalist (a queer fish, like the cuttle, with an ink-bag for
the confusion of enemies), complaining that he was fagged and used up,
and desiring me to say that nowhere could complete rest be obtained as in
King's Cobb.

I wrote and assured him on this point. The town, I said, lay wrapped in
the hills as in blankets, its head only, winking a sleepy eye, projecting
from the top of the broad steep gully in which it was stretched at ease.
Thither few came to the droning coast; and such as did, looked up at the
High Street baking in the sun, and, thinking of Jacob's ladder, composed
them to slumber upon the sand and left the climbing to the angels. Here,
I said, the air and the sea were so still that one could hear the oysters
snoring in their beds; and the l