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‘We can’t go fourteen miles in this way,’ she says. ‘Where is the nearest inn? Ask that brute in the field!’

I take а shilling from my pocket and hold it up in the sun. The shilling exercises magnetic virtues. The shilling draws the peasant slowly toward me from the middle of the field. I inform him that we want to put up the horses and to hire а carriage to take us back to Farleigh Hall. Where can we do that? The peasant answers (with his eye on the shilling):

‘At Oonderbridge, to be zure.’ (At Underbridge, to be sure.)

‘Is it far to Underbridge?’

The peasant repeats, ‘Var to Oonderbridge?’ – and laughs at the question. ‘Hoo-hoo-hoo!’ (Underbridge is evidently close by – if we could only find it.) ‘Will you show us the way, my man?’ ‘Will you gi’ oi а drap of zyder?’ I courteously bend my head, and point to the shilling. The agricultural intelligence exerts itself. The peasant joins our melancholy procession. My wife is а fine woman, but he never once looks at my wife – and, more extraordinary still, he never even looks at the horses. His eyes are with his mind – and his mind is on the shilling.

We reach the top of the hill – and, behold on the other side, nestling in а valley, the shrine of our pilgrimage, the town of Underbridge! Here our guide claims his shilling, and leaves us to find out the inn for ourselves. I am constitutionally а polite man. I say ‘Good morning’ at parting. The guide looks at me with the shilling between his teeth to make sure that it is а good one. ‘Marnin!’ he says savagely – and turns his back on us, as if we had offended him. А curious product, this, of the growth of civilization. If I didn’t see а church spire at Underbridge, I might suppose that we had lost ourselves on а savage island.

II

Arriving at the town, we had no difficulty in finding the inn. The town is composed of one desolate street; and midway in that street stands the inn – an ancient stone building sadly out of repair. The painting on the sign-board is obliterated. The shutters over the long range of front windows are all closed. А cock and his hens are the only living creatures at the door. Plainly, this is one of the old inns of the stage-coach period, ruined by the railway. We pass through the open arched doorway, and find no one to welcome us. We advance into the stable yard behind; I assist my wife to dismount – and there we are in the position already disclosed to view at the opening of this narrative. No bell to ring. No human creature to answer when I call. I stand helpless, with the bridles of the horses in my hand. Mrs. Fairbank saunters gracefully down the length of the yard and does – what all women do, when they find themselves in а strange place. She opens every door as she passes it, and peeps in. On my side, I have just recovered my breath, I am on the point of shouting for the hostler for the third and last time, when I hear Mrs. Fairbank suddenly call to me: