The fourth brake in thirty minutes had just turned into Sir Thomas’s park to tell the Hall that ‘The Earth was flat’; a knot of obviously American tourists were kodaking his lodge-gates; while the tea-shop opposite the lych-gate was full of people buying postcards of the old font as it had lain twenty years in the sexton’s shed.  We went to the alcoholic pub and congratulated the proprietor.

‘It’s bringin’ money to the place,’ said he.  ’But in a sense you can buy money too dear.  It isn’t doin’ us any good.  People are laughin’ at us.  That’s what they’re doin’....  Now, with regard to that Vote of ours you may have heard talk about....’

‘For Gorze sake, chuck that votin’ business,’ cried an elderly man at the door.  ‘Money-gettin’ or no money-gettin’, we’re fed up with it.’

‘Well, I do think,’ said the publican, shifting his ground, ’I do think Sir Thomas might ha’ managed better in some things.’

’He tole me,’—­the elderly man shouldered his way to the bar—­’he tole me twenty years ago to take an’ lay that font in my tool-shed.  He tole me so himself.  An’ now, after twenty years, me own wife makin’ me out little better than the common ‘angman!’

‘That’s the sexton,’ the publican explained.  ’His good lady sells the postcards—­if you ‘aven’t got some.  But we feel Sir Thomas might ha’ done better.’

‘What’s he got to do with it?’ said Woodhouse.

‘There’s nothin’ we can trace ’ome to ’im in so many words, but we think he might ‘ave saved us the font business.  Now, in regard to that votin’ business—­’

‘Chuck it!  Oh, chuck it!’ the sexton roared, ’or you’ll ‘ave me cuttin’ my throat at cock-crow.  ‘Ere’s another parcel of fun-makers!’

A motor-brake had pulled up at the door and a multitude of men and women immediately descended.  We went out to look.  They bore rolled banners, a reading-desk in three pieces, and, I specially noticed, a collapsible harmonium, such as is used on ships at sea.

‘Salvation Army?’ I said, though I saw no uniforms.

Two of them unfurled a banner between poles which bore the legend:  ’The Earth is flat.’  Woodhouse and I turned to Bat.  He shook his head.  ’No, no!  Not me....  If I had only seen their costumes in advance!’

‘Good Lord!’ said Ollyett.  ‘It’s the genuine Society!’

The company advanced on the green with the precision of people well broke to these movements.  Scene-shifters could not have been quicker with the three-piece rostrum, nor stewards with the harmonium.  Almost before its cross-legs had been kicked into their catches, certainly before the tourists by the lodge-gates had begun to move over, a woman sat down to it and struck up a hymn: 

     Hear ther truth our tongues are telling,
       Spread ther light from shore to shore,
     God hath given man a dwelling
       Flat and flat for evermore.