"A stray one might come in at any moment," I replied.

Anyway, I didn't get the blotting-paper.



THE BLOOD-FEUD OF TOAD-WATER
A WEST-COUNTRY EPIC



The Cricks lived at Toad-Water; and in the same lonely upland spot
Fate had pitched the home of the Saunderses, and for miles around
these two dwellings there was never a neighbour or a chimney or even
a burying-ground to bring a sense of cheerful communion or social
intercourse. Nothing but fields and spinneys and barns, lanes and
waste-lands. Such was Toad-Water; and, even so, Toad-Water had its
history.

Thrust away in the benighted hinterland of a scattered market
district, it might have been supposed that these two detached items
of the Great Human Family would have leaned towards one another in a
fellowship begotten of kindred circumstances and a common isolation
from the outer world. And perhaps it had been so once, but the way
of things had brought it otherwise. Indeed, otherwise. Fate, which
had linked the two families in such unavoidable association of
habitat, had ordained that the Crick household should nourish and
maintain among its earthly possessions sundry head of domestic
fowls, while to the Saunderses was given a disposition towards the
cultivation of garden crops. Herein lay the material, ready to