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be quite frank with you, we were displeased with the conduct of the Earl of Essex.’
    ‘You were displeased with the conduct of the Earl of Essex – Elizabeth’s Essex?’ Mrs Feather is uncertain how to take this.
    ‘Yes, indeed. But they needn’t have chopped his head off four years later, all the same. By the way, my name is Armigel – Rupert Armigel.’ The ancient clergyman has produced a snuff-box and is tapping it. Grant sees that because he himself carries no snuff-box there is going to be a hitch in some ritual of introduction that the old gentleman is proposing. This embarrasses him acutely; he blushes; and his mother has to come to his rescue in this matter of names.
    ‘My name is Feather – Alice Feather – and this is my son Grant. Do you live here, Mr Armigel?’
    ‘Assuredly – most assuredly.’ The ancient clergyman pauses while Grant, who has been obliged to take a pinch of snuff, gives a sequence of sneezes that ring out startlingly in the bare chapel. ‘Rupert Armigel, madam – domestic chaplain to Miss Candleshoe.’
    Mrs Feather gives a cry of delight – presumably at discovering that a Candleshoe still lives at Candleshoe. Grant’s embarrassment returns, and he edges away towards Gerard Christmas’ monument. The foundering admiral, he realizes, bears an unmistakable family likeness to the old lady who, a few minutes before, has been worshipping here. But there is something else – some further likeness – that eludes, puzzles him.
    ‘You judge it appropriate?’ Mr Armigel is at his elbow, and now all three are confronting Admiral Candleshoe’s memorial.
    ‘It’s very handsome.’ Grant hopes that he has hit on the right epithet.
    ‘I agree with you. Both as an artist, which was my first profession, and as a very old friend and – um – adherent of the Candleshoe family, I am entirely pleased with it. Moreover Miss Candleshoe herself, I am glad to say, considers that Christmas has done a very good piece of work. She considers that the thing will serve very well.’
    Grant, not without satisfaction, sees something like alarm momentarily visit his mother’s features. ‘Has Christmas done anything else here?’ he asks.
    ‘Decidedly – most decidedly. You will see a work of considerable interest in the house itself. And that reminds me that I have been remiss – most remiss. Miss Candleshoe has desired me to invite you to take a glass of wine. I hope there is some wine. And perhaps we had better wait on her now.’
    The Feathers make modest protestations, but Grant knows that his mother is jubilant. Once more he takes refuge in the monument – this time peering at an inscription low down on the right. The light is bad; he fails to decipher it; and Mr Armigel comes to his rescue.
    ‘An addition, Mr Feather. A copy of modern verses which, although not inappropriate to their subject, strike, to my mind, a jarring note. Modern poetry is out of place, surely, in connection with the Islands Voyage.’
    Grant has knelt down and can now read the lettering. It is incised in an ancient character and still faintly gilt. For the second time that evening he gives himself to declaiming English verse.
     
    ‘Aye me! whilst thee the shores and sounding seas
    Wash far away, where’er thy bones are buried;
    Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides,
    Where thou perhaps under the whelming tide…’
     
    Grant breaks off. ‘Say! But that’s Milton. I thought you said–’
    Mr Armigel nods placidly. ‘Quite so – precisely so. An elegy called “Lycidas”, Mr Feather. Beautiful in itself. But modern poetry is not suitable on Admiral Candleshoe’s monument.’
    Enter these enchanted woods, You who dare… It comes home to Grant with marked force that about Candleshoe Manor there is something a little out of the way. Perhaps the ether wobbles. Conceivably there is a kink in space. Time – at least within the consciousnesses of the residents – is far from behaving as it should. Grant gets