I came to Marshmallows, necessary to the gathering of such experiences,) I came to the conclusion—­not that I had got into an extraordinary parish of characters—­but that every parish must be more or less extraordinary from the same cause.  Why did I not use to see such people about me before?  Surely I had undergone a change of some sort.  Could it be, that the trouble I had been going through of late, had opened the eyes of my mind to the understanding, or rather the simple seeing, of my fellow-men?

But the people among whom I had been to-day belonged rather to such as might be put into a romantic story.  Certainly I could not see much that was romantic in the old lady; and yet, those eyes and that tight-skinned face—­what might they not be capable of in the working out of a story?  And then the place they lived in!  Why, it would hardly come into my ideas of a nineteenth-century country parish at all.  I was tempted to try to persuade myself that all that had happened, since I rose to look out of the window in the old house, had been but a dream.  For how could that wooded dell have come there after all?  It was much too large for a quarry.  And that madcap girl—­she never flung herself into the pond!—­it could not be.  And what could the book have been that the lady with the sea-blue eyes was reading?  Was that a real book at all?  No.  Yes.  Of course it was.  But what was it?  What had that to do with the matter?  It might turn out to be a very commonplace book after all.  No; for commonplace books are generally new, or at least in fine bindings.  And here was a shabby little old book, such as, if it had been commonplace, would not have been likely to be the companion of a young lady at the bottom of a quarry—­

   “A savage place, as holy and enchanted
    As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
    By woman wailing for her demon lover.”

I know all this will sound ridiculous, especially that quotation from Kubla Khan coming after the close of the preceding sentence; but it is only so much the more like the jumble of thoughts that made a chaos of my mind as I went home.  And then for that terrible pool, and subterranean passage, and all that—­what had it all to do with this broad daylight, and these dying autumn leaves?  No doubt there had been such places.  No doubt there were such places somewhere yet.  No doubt this was one of them.  But, somehow or other, it would not come in well.  I had no intention of going in for—­that is the phrase now—­going in for the romantic.  I would take the impression off by going to see Weir the carpenter’s old father.  Whether my plan was successful or not, I shall leave my reader to judge.

I found Weir busy as usual, but not with a coffin this time.  He was working at a window-sash.  “Just like life,” I thought—­tritely perhaps.  “The other day he was closing up in the outer darkness, and now he is letting in the light.”