after,' he added with a doleful look, 'I am afraid it is so small that I am ashamed to mention
it: I doubt I have published more than a score. Not, mark you,' he said with a skip, 'that I
have not conceived, worked out and entirely composed at least ten times as many, and on
this very sward too, excellent tales, capital tales that have made me (a partial judge, I
confess) laugh aloud with pleasure. But you must understand, sir, that each man has his
particular way of writing, and mine is by saying my pieces over as I walk - I find the
physical motion dispel the gross humours and encourage the flow of ideas. Yet that is
where the danger lies: if it encourage them too vigorously, if my piece is forfned to my full
satisfaction, as just now I conceived the chapter in which Sophonisba confines Roderigo
in the Iron Maiden on pretence of wanton play and begins to turn the screw, why then it is
done, finished; and my mind, my imagination will h"ve nothing more to do with it - declines
even to write it down, or, on compulsion, records a mere frigid catalogue of unlikely
statements. The only way for me to succeed is by attaining a near-success, a coitus
interruptus with my Muse, if you will forgive me the expression, and then running home to
my pen for the full consummation. And this I cannot induce rny bookseller to understand: I
tell him that the work of the mind is essentially different from manual labour; I tell him that
in the second case mere industry and application will hew a forest of wood and carry an
ocean of water, whereas in the first . . . and he sends word that the press is at a stand,
that he must have the promised twenty sheets by return.' Blue Breeches repeated his
Greek remark, and added, 'But here, sir, our ways must part; unless perhaps I can tempt
you to view my dell.'
'Is it perhaps a druidical dell, sir?' asked Stephen, smiling as he shook his head.
'Druidical? Oh no, not at all. Though something might be made of druids: The Druid's
Curse, or The Spectre of the Henge. No, my dell is only a place where I sit and
contemplate my bustards.'
'Your bustards, sir?' cried Stephen, his pale eyes searching the man's face. 'Otis tarda?'
The same.'
'I have never seen one in England,' said Stephen.
'Indeed, they are grown very rare: when I was a little boy you might see small droves of
them, looking remarkably like sheep. But they still exist; they are creatures of habit, and I
have followed them since I was very young, as my father and grandfather did before me.
From my dell I can certainly undertake to show you a sitting hen; and there is a fair
chance of two or three cock-birds.'
'Would it be far, at all?'
'Oh, not above an hour, if we step out; and I have, after all, finished my chapter.'
Stephen gazed at his watch. Martin, an authority on the thick-kneed curlew, would forgive
him for being late in such a cause; but Jack Aubrey had a naval regard for time - he was
absurdly particular about punctuality to the very minute, and the idea of facing a Jack
Aubrey seven feet tall and full of barely-contained wrath at having been kept waiting two
whole hours, a hundred and twenty minutes, made Stephen hesitate; but not for very long.
'I shall hire a post-chaise at Polton Episcopi,' he said inwardly, 'a chaise and four, and thus
make up the time.'
The Marquess of Granby, Polton's only inn, had a bench along its outer wall, facing the
afternoon sun; and on this bench, framed by a climbing rose on the one hand and a
honeysuckle on the other, dozed Nathaniel Martin. Swallows, whose half-built nests were