rious fitfully bounding pace, what
he at first supposed to be a gig-umbrella that had been blown from some
conveyance, but what he presently believed to be a lean dwarf man upon a
little pony. Having followed this object for some distance without
gaining on it, and having called to it many times without receiving any
answer, he pursued it for miles and miles, when, at length coming up with
it, he discovered it to be the last bustard in Great Britain, degenerated
into a wingless state, and running along the ground. Resolved to capture
him or perish in the attempt, he closed with the bustard; but the
bustard, who had formed a counter-resolution that he should do neither,
threw him, stunned him, and was last seen making off due west. This
weird main, at that stage of metempsychosis, may have been a sleep-walker
or an enthusiast or a robber; but I awoke one night to find him in the
dark at my bedside, repeating the Athanasian Creed in a terrific voice. I
paid my bill next day, and retired from the county with all possible
precipitation.

That was not a commonplace story which worked itself out at a little Inn
in Switzerland, while I was staying there. It was a very homely place,
in a village of one narrow zigzag street, among mountains, and you went
in at the main door through the cow-house, and among the mules and the
dogs and the fowls, before ascending a great bare staircase to the rooms;
which were all of unpainted wood, without plastering or papering,--like
rough packing-cases. Outside there was nothing but the straggling
street, a little toy church with a copper-coloured steeple, a pine
forest, a torrent, mists, and mountain-sides. A young man belonging to
this Inn had disappeared eight weeks before (it was winter-time), and was
supposed to have had some undiscovered love affair, and to have gone for
a soldier. He had got up in the night, and dropped into the village
street from the loft in which he slept with another man; and he had done
it so quietly, that his companion and fellow-labourer had heard no
movement when he was awakened in the morning, and they said, "Louis,
where is Henri?" They looked for him high and low, in vain, and gave him
up. Now, outside this Inn, there stood, as there stood outside every
dwelling in the village, a stack of firewood; but the stack belonging to
the Inn was higher than any of the rest, because the Inn was the richest
house, and burnt the most fuel. It began to be noticed