ound

Desertio

he was an American, and his respect for l

cy. The last charge against the accused was one of burglary; the next charge on the paper is of bigamy and desertion. It does without question appear that the defence, in aspiring to rebut this last charge, have really admitted the next. Either Innocent Smith is still under a charge of attempted burglary, or else that

aid Moon quietly. "The few documents which the de

quarter?" a

wered Moon, "we had

to close his eyes, and, in

t Miss Gray was in possession of this docu

aid Inglewood

n a low and painful voice, and then with visi

documents in our own possession. Of these the principal and most certain is the testimony of Innocent Smith's gardener, wh

and a lamp-post painted a peculiar yellow-green and a red pillar-box that stood exactly at the corner. Inglewood was sure of the place; he had passed it twenty times in his constitutionals on the bicycle; he had always dimly felt it was a place where something might occur. But it gave him quite a shiver to feel that the face of his frightful friend or enemy Smith might at any time have appeared over the garden bushes above. The gardener's account, unlike the curate's, was quite free from decorative adjectives, however many he may have uttered privately when writing it. He simply said that on a particular morning Mr. Smith came out and began to play about with a rake, as he often did. Sometimes he would tickle the nose of his eldest child (he had two children); sometim

dren a long way from here. My other wife's got redder hair than yours, an

ess supplied by Inglewood's accidental memory of the place. He could see with his mind's eye that big bare-headed figure with the ragged rake swaggering up the crooked woodland road, and leaving lamp-post and pillar-box behind. But the gardener, on his own account, was quite prepared to swear to t

ng that Smith had fled from Croydon and disappeared on the Continent, he seemed prepared to prove all this on his own account. "I hope you are not so insular," he s

ood was already reading the account in question. It was

front at Gras, rather north of Dunquerque. I am willi

iful, such as a trim flower-bed or an ivory statuette. One does not permit beauty to pervade one's whole life, just as on

hology which the eye of science cannot as yet pierce, it is the humiliating fact that on that particula

e, who came wading to shore with the water not up to his knees, though it would have reached the hips of many men. He leaned on a long rake or pole, which looked like a trident, and made him look like a Triton. Wet as he was, and with strips of seaweed clinging to him, he walked across to my cafe, and, sitting down at a table outside, asked for cherry brandy, a liqueur which I keep, but is seldom demanded. Then the monster, with great politeness, invited me to partake of a vermouth before my dinner

me alarmingly minute. He gave a description of the house detailed enough for an auctioneer. I have forgotten nearly all the d

d in astonishment. `Why, th

aid, nodding heavily. `T

ied testily, `you've just

iratorially. `They said it was Kent. But Kentish men

teries~ of the young men are beyond me. I go by common sense, or, at t

good thing science ever discovered-a good thing,

on to my intelligence. `I mean,' he said, `that going right r

rter,' I asked, `to

hall find the wife I really married and the house that is really mine. And that house will have a greener lamp-post and a red

' I replied; `reas

is desires to the pr

ontent to fulfil

re here, and most

to his almost terrific height,

said, `I am not

tive p

Oh! I know some say it was no good, and you're just back where you were before. Why, blast it all, that's just where we all

again, and then said something indifferent and soothing; but

hman marches to the outskirts of the city, and alone. But I am going to turn the world upside down, too. I'm going to turn myself upside down. I'm going to walk upside down in the cursed upsidedownland of the An

an excessive payment, which also pointed to some loss of mental balance. This is all I know of the episode of the man landed from the fishing-boat, and I hope it may

nglewood, "comes from the town of Crazok, in th

le get down at the platform where I have to watch. This makes my life rather lonely, and I am thrown back much upon the books I have. But I cannot discuss these very much

contrary to the pure principles of humanitarianism, with which indeed, owing to the scarcity of books, they were ill acquainted. I did not approve of these cruel acts, tho

len, but not enough to whiten the plain, which stretched away a sort of sad purple in all directions, save where the flat tops of some distant tablelands caught the evening light like lakes. As the solitary man came stamping along on the thin snow by the train he grew larger and larger; I thought I had never seen so larg

ion, though they mostly disgraced themselves upon the government side. I was just moving to his assistance, when he whirled up his rake and laid ou

assertion of his aim, he could only say rath

houses to be had ro

, `the district has

ou know, has recen

ther bu

,' he cried; `I mean a

ve house, for it

ere of folk-lore, and its unfortunate effects can still be seen in the bright colours of the children's dolls and of the ik

her house of you

ouse that grew dull, but I that grew dull in it. My wife

`you walked straight out of the f

tely, apparently supposin

"The Doll's Hou

knew he was an Englishman; for Englishmen alway

member, when you were a child, how those little windows WERE windows, while the big windows weren't. A child has a doll's house, and shrieks when a front do

e found out how to turn a house into a doll's house. Get a long way off it: God lets us turn all things into toys by his great gift of distance. Once let me see my old brick house standing up quite little against the horizon, and

, having dared to be free, why should you not take advantage of your freedom? As the greatest modern writers have pointed out, what you called your marriage was only your mood. You have a right to le

ng was the long and labouring trail of smoke out of the railway engine, violet in tint, v

that town over there and have love all over again, and perhaps marry some beautiful woman and

I felt impelled to ask him what he meant,

me dreamy eye, `why it is really wicked and d

it dangerous?

him,' answered this odd person,

d all rather say that what we want most is to be lost: to find ourselves in untrodden

desolate scene-the dark purple plains, the neglected railroad, the few ragged knots of malcontents

hing like fury, and struck the foo

nd Shaw takes temperance beverages in the suburbs; but the things I do are unprecedented things. This round road I am treading is an untrodden path. I do believe in breaking out; I am a revolutionist. But don't you see that all th

ue reflection, `I don't t

f a sigh, `then you have exp

mean?' I asked

enly to the train he got into it just as it was steaming away at last. An

ed thought, he struck me as an interesting person: I should like to find ou

to been, and it was again without interruption that Inglewood opened another paper upon his pile. "The Court will be indulge

gness of his thought. I am indeed in one place, for my uncle took me to this temple when I was a boy, and in this I shall doubtless die. But if a man remain in one place he shall see that the place changes. The pagoda of my temple stands up silently

sea, when I go to the top of the temple at morning. And yet when he came, it was as if an elephant had strayed from the armies of the great

of teeth on it like the teeth of a dragon. His face was white and discomposed, after the fashion of

' And then he told me with indelicate haste that the lamp outside hi

our house nor any h

is temple and

, like the hunger of dogs. And this seemed to me a strange ques

porphyry and sometimes ebony, but the trees and the temple stand still under it all. So the great Confucius taught us that if we do always the same things with our hands and our feet as do the wise beasts and birds, with our heads we may think

o that he seemed enormous; y

' he said, `and your

implicity, answered: `An

othing but a b

giant from whom the

s mighty arms and ask

for what he should be

eing r

t is a shame that they should be wrong. We are so vulgar and violent, we ha

ssness, asked him why he thought

oy them. For you live by customs, but we live by creeds. Behold me! In my country I am called Smip. My country is abandoned, my name is defiled, because I pursue around the world what really belongs to me. You are ste

At the last remai

the word he uttere

ard disappeared

this man again n

the wise are

ng-

bly make clear the nature of our client's curious but innocent experiment

s not even a hamlet it is difficult to invent a nation. My father was an Irishman of the fiercest and most free-shooting of the old Californian kind. My mother was a Spaniard, proud of descent from the old Spanish families round San Francisco, yet accused for all that of some admixture of Red Indian blood. I was well educated and fond of music and books. But, like many other hybrids, I was too good or too bad for the world; and after attempting many things I was glad enough to get a sufficient though a lonely living in this little cabar

ttract the stars and collect them as sea-crags collect a mere glitter of phosphorous. These terraces and towers of rock do not, like smaller crests, seem to be the end of the world. Rather they seem to be its awful beginning: its huge foundations. We could almost fancy the mountain branching out above us li

s I seem to hear it clashing overhead with other rocks- yes, city against city and citadel against citadel, far up into the night. It was on such an eveni

ulders; and such clothes as clung about him were rags and tongues of red and yellow, so that he had the air of being dressed like an Indian in feathers or autumn leaves. The rake or pitchfork, or whatever it was, he used sometimes as an alpenstock, som

taring rather foolishly at the rude lantern of lead and coloured glass that hangs over my door. It is old, but of no value; my grandmother gave it to me long ago: she was devout, and it happens that the glass is painted with a crude pi

and silver round the edges of the dark mountain amphitheatre; and between us and the ravine below rose up out of the deeps and went up into the heights the straight soli

ion, and before he spoke I knew what he meant. Beyond t

of our ancient eagles'. `The wise men followed the star and foun

said, smiling, `on whet

ding that he certai

`I am a man who left his own house because

sounds parado

ght of different skies, and beyond the series of the seas. I loved them with a devouring love, because they seemed not only distant but unattainable. Never did human creatures seem so dear and so des

cried, `that you have c

ish, yet you are co

not yet accomplishe

lgrim to cure mysel

es of what my fathers had felt about the world, and of something from whence I came. I l

id that we were all in exile, and that no earthly house

ed a single eagle drift out beyond the

the reason,' he said-`the secret of this life of man, so ecstatic and so unappeased. But I think there is more to

,' I said. `

nting his pole out at the sky and

you mean?'

voice, `the largest of the idols-

and infinity and al

lamp-post and a hedge. I mean that God bade me love one spot and serve it, and do all things however wild in praise of it, so that this one spot might be a witness against all the infinities and

he eagles. But since he went a fever of homelessness will often shake me. I am troubled by rainy meadows and

: "And, finally, we desire to put in

her eccentric and a little change did him good. One evening last week I was bringing the tea-things out on to the lawn when I nearly dropped them. The end of a long rake was suddenly stuck over the hedge, and planted like a jumping-pole; and over the hedge, just like a monkey on a stick, came a huge, horrible man, all hairy and ragged like Robinson Crusoe. I scream

n and said, very loud and strong: `Oh, what a lovely pl

women had left the court before the more recent of the investigations. Mrs. Duke was still asleep, and Innocent Smith, looking like a large hunchback in the twilight, was bending closer and closer to

against the table, tipped his chair backwards so far as to be in direct danger of falling over, e

out," he said. "Oh! don't talk to me! I ain't littery and that, but I know fairy-tales when I hear 'em. I got a bit stumped in some of the philosophical bits and felt inclined to go out for a

gravely, "that we qui

ge does me good.'-`But the blasted thing's got tusks,' I says.-`Don't look a gift 'orse in the mouth,' you says, `but thank the goodness and the graice that on your birth 'as smiled.'-`But it's nearly as big as the 'ouse,' I says.-`That's the bloomin' perspective,' you says, `and the sacred magic of distance.'-`Why, the elephant's trumpetin' like the Day of Judgement,' I says.-`That's your

"that you still doubt the evidence of

all those tales? 'Ow can we drop in and buy the `Pink 'Un' at the railway station at Kosky Wosky or whatever it was? 'Ow can we go

h an expression of re

ued Gould, "can c

ied Michael with restraint; "but w

just exactly the sime reason that he should communicate with Messrs. 'Anbury and Bootle of Paternoster R

id Michael, "why is it among the duties of man to com

kes the crumpet, does Lady Bullingdon at Penge. But it's one of the duties of a prosecutor pursuin' the in

g in these people he

asher, and these are the 'omes he's smashed. I don't set up for a 'oly man; but I wouldn't 'ave all those poor girls on my conscience for something. And I think a chap that's ca

matter rather irregularly. This is really the fourth charge on the charge sheet,

from Michael broke the sil