ut vivre loin des gens d'eglise."

There is a little stream which flows through Middleshire which seems to
reflect the spirit of that quiet county, so slow is its course, so
narrow is its width. Even the roads don't take the trouble to bridge it.
They merely hump themselves slightly when they feel it tickling
underneath them, and go on, vouchsafing no further notice of its
existence. Yet the Drone is a local celebrity in Middleshire, and, like
most local celebrities, is unknown elsewhere. The squire's sons have
lost immense trout in the Drone as it saunters through their lands, and
most of them have duly earned thereby the distinction (in Middleshire)
of being the best trout-rod in England. Middleshire bristles with the
"best shots in England" and the "best preachers in England" and the
cleverest men in England. The apathetic mother-country knows, according
to Middleshire, "but little of her greatest men." At present she
associates her loyal county with a breed of small black pigs.

Through this favored locality the Drone winds, and turns and turns
again, as if loath to leave the rich, low meadow-lands and clustering
villages upon its way. After skirting the little town of Westhope and
the gardens of Westhope Abbey, the Drone lays itself out in comfortable
curves and twists innumerable through the length and breadth of the
green country till it reaches Warpington, whose church is so near the
stream that in time of flood the water hitches all kinds of things it
has no further use for among the grave-stones of the little church-yard.
On one occasion, after repeated prayers for rain, it even overflowed
the lower part of the vicar's garden, and vindictively carried away his
bee-hives. But that was before he built the little wall at the bottom of
the garden.

Slightly raised above the church, on ground held together by old elms,
the white vicarage of Warpington stands, blinking ever through its trees
at the church like a fond wife at her husband. Indeed, so like had she
become to him that she had even developed a tiny bell-tower near the
kitchen chimney, with a single bell in it, feebly rung by a female
servant on saints' days and G.F.S. gatherings.

About eight o'clock on this particular morning in July the Drone could
hear, if it wanted to hear, which apparently no one else did, the high,
unmodulated voice in which Mr. Gresley was reading the morning service
to Mrs. Gresley and to a young thrush, which was hurling its