on to be broken by the shrill
note of a bat that came and went with magic swerve and speed.

"Well," said John Berrisford, after lighting a fresh cigar, "isn't this
rather convincing?"

"About the country, you mean?"

"Yes. On such a night do you thirst for Paris and cafe chatter with a
drink-sodden Futurist?"

"It's too clear," answered Martin, looking round. "Perhaps to-morrow
night it will be pouring, and then even you may have a hankering after
the roar of traffic and the fine smell of a city."

"My dear Martin, you're impossible. You can't have everything your own
way. If you intend to worship at one shrine you've got to keep it up
for a bit and give the deity a chance of getting hold of you."

"And what if you don't believe in worshipping deities?"

"Then you'll be very unhappy."

"But you don't worship and you profess to be happy?"

"Don't I worship?"

"It's the first I've heard of it."

"How do you suppose I would be here now if I didn't worship the place?
I'm a positive mystic."

"And the mystery?"

"The blessed mystery of Ham and Eggs."

"It sounds very fleshly. Tell me about it."

"Fleshly! It's the most spiritual thing on earth: in fact it's the
cardinal point in the country gentleman's faith. But I'd better
explain it all from the beginning. Just after I'd left Oxford your
grandfather died and left me this estate. I was young and rebellious,
as every young man should be, and I can tell you I didn't enjoy the
prospect of settling down as a squire. Like Herrick, I preferred
London to 'that dull Devonshire.' I wanted to hang about town, to join
the devotees of Morris, to be a genius, a writer of brilliant plays and
beautiful books, to be a lover of woman and to have breakfast after
lunch. So I let this place to a tenant and fooled round."

"But I don't want to fool round. I want reasonable work."

"That's what they all say. It's what I said. But I never did any
work."

"And you liked it?"

"On the whole, yes--until at last I went down to stay with a friend at
a gorgeous place in the Cotswolds. There was a great grey manor-house,
Jacobean and very good about the windows. My host gave me ham and eggs
for breakfast: I had been used to omelettes and white wine. After
breakfast--God, how I remember it--he took me across his wide, smooth
lawns to talk to the keeper. We shot all day--I hadn't forgotten how
to bowl over a pheasant--and then we dined and drank port and smoked