The Brass And Steel Wires In His System Had Degenerated Into Just Those Poor Little Soft Grey Threads Which Others Have And Are Subject To Many Fantastical Ailments.

He fell into a nervous condition and started and blanched and was confused when suddenly hailed or spoken to even by some harmless old woman.

He trembled at a shadow, and the very sight and sound of a wasp in the breakfast room when he was trying to eat a little toast and marmalade filled him, thrilled him, with fantastic terrors never felt before. And in vain to still the beating of his heart he would sit repeating: "It's only a wasp and nothing more." Then some of the parishioners who loved animals, for there are usually one or two like that in a village, began to say that it was a "judgment" on him, that old Mother Nature, angry at the persecutions of her feathered children by this young cleric who was supposed to be a messenger of mercy, had revenged herself on him in that way, using her little yellow insects as her ministers.

XXXIV

IN CHITTERNE CHURCHYARD

Chitterne is one of those small out-of-the-world villages in the south Wiltshire downs which attract one mainly because of their isolation and loneliness and their unchangeableness. Here, however, you discover that there has been an important change in comparatively recent years - some time during the first half of the last century. Chitterne, like most villages, possesses one church, a big building with a tall spire standing in its central part.

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