somebody else the task of breaking it
up into sub-headings, which were of a spicier sort, as "Peeress and
Poisons", and "The Eerie Ear", "The Eyres in their Eyrie", and so on
through a hundred happy changes. Then followed the legend of the Ear,
amplified from Finn's first letter, and then the substance of his later
discoveries, as follows:

I know it is the practice of journalists to put the end of the story
at the beginning and call it a headline. I know that journalism largely
consists in saying "Lord Jones Dead" to people who never knew that Lord
Jones was alive. Your present correspondent thinks that this, like
many other journalistic customs, is bad journalism; and that the Daily
Reformer has to set a better example in such things. He proposes to tell
his story as it occurred, step by step. He will use the real names of
the parties, who in most cases are ready to confirm his testimony. As
for the headlines, the sensational proclamations--they will come at the
end.

I was walking along a public path that threads through a private
Devonshire orchard and seems to point towards Devonshire cider, when
I came suddenly upon just such a place as the path suggested. It was a
long, low inn, consisting really of a cottage and two barns; thatched
all over with the thatch that looks like brown and grey hair grown
before history. But outside the door was a sign which called it the Blue
Dragon; and under the sign was one of those long rustic tables that used
to stand outside most of the free English inns, before teetotallers
and brewers between them destroyed freedom. And at this table sat three
gentlemen, who might have lived a hundred years ago.

Now that I know them all better, there is no difficulty about
disentangling the impressions; but just then they looked like three very
solid ghosts. The dominant figure, both because he was bigger in all
three dimensions, and because he sat centrally in the length of the
table, facing me, was a tall, fat man dressed completely in black,
with a rubicund, even apoplectic visage, but a rather bald and rather
bothered brow. Looking at him again, more strictly, I could not exactly
say what it was that gave me the sense of antiquity, except the antique
cut of his white clerical necktie and the barred wrinkles across his
brow.

It was even less easy to fix the impression in the case of the man at
the right end of the table, who, to say truth, was as commonplace a
person as could be se