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With the same speed with which it had turned upon its axis, millions of years before the event occurred which gave to the immemorial Grail of Glastonbury its new and Christian significance, the old earth turned now, carrying with it Wirral Hill, like the hump of a great sacred dromedary, and upon Wirral Hill these five male bipeds, each with his staff of office decently concealed, each with a wooden walking-stick, cut from the vegetable world, as an additional masculine prerogative, each with his orderly and rationally working skull full of one single thought. This thought might have been summed up in the words which the oldest, and certainly the poorest, of all the five, now addressed to the woman on the seat.

“What be thee doing out o' bed, Mad Bet? T ain't Zumraer-time, 'ee seely wold 'ooman; 'tis cuckoo-time, *s know! Bed be the pleace for crazy folks. Wurral Hill, of a shiny night, baint a pleace for thee. Wurral Hill be a pleace for quiet bachelor men, not for a crazy wold 'ooman like thee!” The speaker was a tall grey-haired man dressed in clothes that looked as if they did not belong to him.

“He's a good one, he is, to talk to the likes of she.” expostulated the tall man's recent companion, edging himself as close as he dared to the newcomers, with evident grateful relief at their appearance upon the scene.

“Why, Mr. Jones,” cried Sam, for the tall man's companion turned out to be none other than Number Two himself, “what are you doing out of Hospital? Have they finished your cure? Are you taking a walk?”

Number Two glanced uneasily at Mr. Barter, whom he recognised with infallible instinct as the official one, the unbending one, the pillar of society, in this little group.

“I be going back . . . I be going back ... I be going back,” he mumbled. “Doorman be a friend of mine. I be going back.”

“What brought you out so far?” enquired Sam.

“Can't sleep o' nights, Mr. Dekker, and that's the truth. If 'tisn't one thing, 'tis another. 'Twere they winds and rains 'afore, and now 't be this shining moon. I've never knowed such carryings-on as come to me in thik horse-spital. As I were telling Mr. Twig, only this morning, there's something going to happen in this here town 'afore long, or my name's not Bartholomew Jones! What with ghosties coming out of they Ruings on rainy nights, and spirits coming out of they Ruings on shiny nights, that horse-spital aint a place for a quiet tradesman like I be.”

“You oughtn't to have climbed up a steep place like this, Mr. Jones,” expostulated Sam.

Number Two came close up to him and whispered in his ear.

"He helped me. I dursn't have done it alone. I knew he when ?a were a self-respectin' tradesman his own self. Don't 'ee go spreading no tales, Mr. Dekker, about me and him. Tisn't right I know for he to help a decent person; but I dursn't have come so far, with my poor 'innards and all, if I hadn't met he. Donnt 'ee worrit about me, Mr. Dekker. He'll take me back where I came, for a copper or two. He'll take me back for less than a sixpence and nothing said!*'

“Where does he sleep nowadays?” asked Sam.

“He? Young Tewsy? Why, Mother Legge, wThat bought Miss Kitty Camel's wold house, lets he sleep next door. He do open next door for she when couples come for a short-time bed or summat ungodly like that, and she gives he a bite, along o' her girt tabby-cat, wrhat she calls Pretty Maid, though it be as ugly as an abortion. You do know Mother Legge, down in Paradise, Mr. Dekker? Her be a real bad 'un, her be; but what decent-living party, I'd like to know, would let a scarecrow like Young Tewsy into 'is cellar?”

While Sam was whispering to Number Two a very different conversation was going on between Mr. Barter and Young Tewsy. Young Tewsy wras a man of incredible age. Number Two was correct in his statement that he remembered him as a respectable Glastonbury tradesman. He had been, as a matter of fact, a well-established chemist in the days of Mr. Wollop's father. Mr. Wollop's father was another of these “respectable” tradesmen who were always on the verge of coming to grief; but old Wollop had his redoubtable son to keep things going, whereas Tewsy, who had lost his offspring, just as he had apparently lost even his Christian name, came to disaster by frequenting, day in and day out, the “Paradise” of that epoch of Glastonbury's history. Young Tewsy's face was more lank and lean than the face of Don Quixote. It was the face of a walking skeleton. And yet it was —strange to say—engraved by no savage lines of revolt. Whether if a human being lives cheek by jowl with utter desperation for half a century he acquires a kind of abnormal resignation resembling that of maggots in carrion no outsider can possibly tell. Probably Young Tewsy would carry the secret of his real attitude to the world hidden behind his cadaverous countenance to the end of his days. But the attitude' that he presented to the world was a perpetual grin. This grin of \uung Tewsy's may have been the grin of the clown of the Pit . . . always beaten, always trampled on, always derided. On the other hand it may have been the grin of the death-skull itself, revealed during Young Tewsy's lifetime, by reason of the extreme cadaverousness of his face. But, whatever it was, it was with this eternal grin, that now. in the bright moonlight upon Wirral Hill, the aged protege of Mother Legge turned his face to the dry and cautious questionings of Tom Barter.

There was more in this brief dialogue than the rest of that group could possibly guess, for, as a matter of fact, it had been in Mother Legge's most expensive bedroom that Mr. Barter had come of late to meet Tossie Stickles; and it was a striking evidence of the old gaol-bird*s diplomatic self-control that never for one eyelid's flicker of his corpse-like face in that bright moonlight did he betray a recognition of which both of them must have been perfectly aware. Young Tewsy had many a time presented the same inscrutable grin in the presence of the great Philip himself, when he begged of the manufacturer at the street-corner; though Philip, less master of his facial muscles than his manager, had been unable, on several occasions, to refrain from a swift, recognisant glance, before he produced his sixpence. For Mr. Crow of The Elms had also found, in his day and hour, a convenient use for Mother Legge's best bedroom. Young Tewsy with his death-skull grin must, in fact, have been known to the tutelary spirits of Glastonbury as a sort of Psychopompus, or inverted Charon, of Limbo. For both Morgan Nelly, and the little nameless embryo now forming in the womb of Tossie, owed their start, in the long human march, to the door-opening and lamp-bearing service of this once “respectable” tradesman of South High Street.

“Did you find her like this?” said Tom Barter to Young Tewsy as they all stood helplessly and rather foolishly before this disconcerting representative of the sex that had conceived them.

“Sure and I did, Mister,*' replied the grinning old man, ”that is this gentleman and me did, what I've *a 'elped up this 'ere eavy ill. What be doin' of, out of yer bed, ye seely wold bitch, at this time of the bloody night?"

In these words of the old man were hopelessly confused the North London accent of his childhood and the broad Somerset of his youth and later life.

“I've never been up here in full Moon before,” said John, addressing Mad Bet.

“ 'Tisn't full tonight,” said Mad Bet.

“I meant practically full,” said John. “Haven't you noticed, lady, how the moon looks full for almost four days if the sky is free of clouds?”

“I be mighty fond of thik moon,” said the woman, “when it's new.”

“I agree with you; I certainly agree with you, lady,” asseverated John eagerly. “It's when it's neither round like it is tonight, nor new like you describe, but all funny and shapeless, that it's not nearly so nice.”

“It don't melt a person's sorrows away till it be big and round,”" said the woman.

“Do you suppose people in all ages have climbed up Wirral Hill in moonlight like this?” enquired John.

“Shouldn't wonder, young man, shouldn't wonder,” replied Mad Bet. “You and me be come and that be summat, baint it? And these other folks be come, baint they? But some folks do come in they's bodies but leave they's souls down in street. Don't 'ee be like one o' they, young man, don't 'ee be like one o' they!”'

“I certainly will not, lady,” announced John in the most emphatic tone of malicious finality.

“Come on, you two,” said Barter addressing his friends. “Let's go on now! I want to get to the top of the hill. I want to look at that tree you were talking about.”

“But what about this woman?” said Sam.

“Dekker thinks an unknown woman is more interesting than an unknown tree,” remarked John.

“Be it the Tree of Life, you gents are seeking?” threw in Mad Bet.

“Precisely, lady,” said John. “That's just it! Don't you want to come on, too, up to the top, with us?”

“Don't be a fool, Crow,'' whispered Mr. Barter. ”Can't you see she's mad?1

'“Mad . . . mad . . • mad,” murmured Young Tewsy with his e\erlasting grin.

“This is Mr. Jones of the old Curiosity Shop/* said Sam, addressing his two friends, in reply to a glance from Number Two which seemed to say—”These gentlemen don't seem to be very alert to the situation“—”the shop that your Welshman is looking after, Crow. He's got to go back to the hospital, Barter."

“It be the Tree of Life what be up there,” reiterated the woman.

“For a silver sixpence I'd take 'er 'ome myself,” interjected Young Tewsy, “if you gents 'ud see the Old Party back to 'orsepital.”

“Come on, come on,” grumbled Barter. “These people can take care of themselves.”

“Somebody must see this woman home,” said Sam.

“She'd like to come to the top of the hill with us,” said John, “Wouldn't you,'lady? She's only resting . « . halfway up. . . . Why should she have to go home on such a night as this? Why should anybody have to go home?”

“Mad . . . mad . . . mad,” murmured Young Tewsy dreamily, contemplating with a lack-lustre eye the revelation of the woman's bald head, as her black-beaded, black-feathered hat slipped awry.

“Me niece Sally what works for our new Mayor,” threw in Number Two, “do say that there'll be no peace in Glastonbury till either Geard or Crow be on top; and me wone thought be that they ghosties from they Ruings, what do worrit I in horse-spital, be corned out o' grave to see which o9 they two 'twill be.”

“For God's sake, come on!” expostulated Mr. Barter.

“Shall I dance for 'ee, me pretty gents all?” cried Mad Bet, rising unexpectedly from the iron seat and catching hold of the heavy flannel skirt which she wore and exposing her wrinkled woolen stockings. “Here we go round the Mulberry Bush!” chanted the old woman, skipping up and down with an expression of childish gravity, while the loose, beaded tassels hanging from her hat bobbed this way and that over her ghastly white skull.

“It's like seeing moonlight on a gibbet,” thought John. “Well, lady?” he said aloud, “Are you coming up hill with us or going down hill with these men?”

But Mad Bet waved away the arm which John had half-con-sciously stretched out towards her. “In and out the window,” she now piped in a shrill scream, tossing up her withered shanks and wagging her bald head from which the hat soon fell to the ground, “in and out the window ... as you have done before!”

Young Tewsy limped forward now and picked up the woman's hat from the grass. The effect of the moonlight, the presence of three gentlemen and one tradesman, thus transformed perforce into an embarrassed audience, seemed to go to the head of this Psychopompus of unwanted infants from Limbo, for, waving Mad Bet's hat in the air, he began to hop up and down on one foot.

“Over the garden-wall,” chanted Young Tewsy as he hopped up and down, “I've let the baby fall, and missus came out and gave me a clout, and asked me what the row's about . . . over the garden-wall!”

“If you chaps won't come on with me,” cried Barter, really quite angry now, “I'll go on alone. These people are all right. These people can take care of themselves. We can't take all Glas-tonbury home.”

“You go on with him, Crow,” said Sam. “And don't forget to tell me what tree you think it is, up there. My father will hold to it, through thick and thin, that it's a Levantine thorn tree!”

“And leave you here till we come back?” said John.

“No, no. I'm going to take this woman with me. She lives at St. Michael's Inn. It's on my way to the Vicarage.”

“I be going with my sweetheart,” cried Mad Bet, suddenly clutching hold of John's arm. “I be going with my dearie to eat o' the Tree of Life!” There was an awkward pause.

“Well, Pm off, anyway,” said Barter, “Pm tired of this,” and he strode away up the hill without looking back, his shadow accompanying him. His outward shadow! There was, however, as Barter ascended the final slope of Wirral Hill, an interior shadow that also accompanied him. SwI am like Judas, though Philip is certainly not like Christ,'' he said to himself.

John's countenance in the moonlight must have expressed anything but pleasure at the woman's grip on Ins arm, though, to do him justice, he made no effort to free himself. He even placed his other arm around Mad Bet's shoulder. But either because her woman's instinct had survived her insanity and she caught this look upon his face, or because, as Mr. Evans would explain, she was bent upon forcing herself to do the one thing she didn't want to do, she now flung herself loose from John, pushing him violently away from her with the enigmatic words, '“Spit it out, spit it out, or it'll grow into a Death-Tree!” And then crying out, just as King Lear did on the cliffs of Dover when he was crowned with fumitory—“If you get me you'll get me by running!” she started off rushing wildly down the hill.

Sam flung a hurried farewell to the others and set off after her, leaving Young Tewsy, who had now sat down by Number Two's side, so tickled by this spectacle that for a minute or two his death's-head countenance became positively grave. Sam had no difficulty in overtaking Mad Bet and she behaved with exemplary quietness all the way to her home. She was indeed so lost in some particular thought that she allowed Sam to take her not only into the inn but up the stairs to her own chamber above the signboard. Here he left her seated on her bed in a kind of dream, a dream so deep that when he bade her good-night, the only thing she said to him was, “ Tis so, 'tis so,” repeated incessantly till he went away. After he had left her and was walking towards the Vicarage his own thoughts began voyaging over strange seas.