on a plot of ground in a very
special manner. I do not gather the precise purpose of the operation,
but it seems that the soil had been very fine and level for a
superficies of about ten yards. To this place the Prebendary walked,
slowly and reflectively, wishing to assure himself that his orders had
been accurately carried out. The plot had been perfectly level the night
before, but Dr Duthoit wanted to be more than sure about it. But to his
extreme annoyance, when he turned by the fig-tree, he saw that the plot
was very far from even. He is an old man, but his sight is good, and at
a distance of several yards he could discern quite plainly that there
had been mischief. The chosen plot was in a disgraceful state. At first
the Prebendary thought that the Custos' sandy tom-cat had scaled the
wire entanglement on the top of the wall. Then he felt inclined to
consider the ruin done by Scamp, the Bishop's wire-haired fox-terrier,
and then, going across, he put on his spectacles and wondered what had
been at work. For the level which had been so carefully established was
all undone. At first the Doctor thought it was the mischief of some
random beast, this confusion of hills and valleys which had taken place
of the billiard-table of the night before. And then it reminded him of
the raised maps which he had seen in the Diocesan Training Schools, and
then it reminded him more distinctly of a sort of picture map which had
illustrated his morning paper a day or two before. And then he wondered
violently, because he saw that somebody had, with infinite pains, made
this garden plot of his into an exact model of Gallipoli Peninsula.

It was all so ingenious and perfect that the old clergyman held his
wrath for the moment, and peered into this miniature intricacy of peaks
and steeps, and gullies and valleys. He had scarcely gathered himself
together to wonder who had had the ingenious impudence for the mischief,
when amazement once more seized him. For he saw now, stooping down, that
this garden Gallipoli was swarming with life. There were hosts on it and
about it, and then Dr Duthoit forgot all about what we call the
realities and facts of life, forgot that this sort of thing does not
happen, and watched what was happening.

He writes that, queerly enough, he lost all sense of size. He was not a
Gulliver looking down upon Lilliput; the mounds ten inches high became
to him actual and lofty summits. The tiny precipices were tremendou