One summer day I travelled by a public conveyance to Pollhampton, a small rustic market town several miles distant from the nearest railroad. My destination was not the town itself, but a lonely heath-grown hill five miles further on, where I wished to find something that grew and blossomed on it, and my first object on arrival was to secure a riding horse or horse and trap to carry me there. I was told at once that it was useless to look for such a thing, as it was market day and everybody was fully occupied. That it was market day I already knew very well, as the two or three main streets and wide market-place in the middle of the town were full of sheep and cows and pigs and people running about and much noise of shoutings and barking dogs. However, the strange object of the strange-looking stranger in coming to the town, interested some of the wild native boys, and they rushed about to tell it, and in less than five minutes a nice neat-looking middle-aged man stood at my elbow and said he had a good horse and trap and for seven-and-sixpence would drive me to the hill, help me there to find what I wanted, and bring me back in time to catch the conveyance. Accordingly in a few minutes we were speeding out of the town drawn by a fast-trotting horse. Fast trotters appeared to be common in these parts, and as we went along the road from time to time a small cloud of dust would become visible far ahead of us, and in two or three minutes a farmer's trap would appear and rush past on its way to market, to vanish behind us in two or three minutes more and be succeeded by another and then others. By-and-by one came past driven by two young women, one holding the reins, the other playing with the whip. They were tall, dark, with black hair, and colourless faces, aged about thirty, I imagined. As they flew by I remarked, "I would lay a sovereign to a shilling that they are twins." "You'd lose your money--there's two or three years between them," said my driver. "Do you know them--you didn't nod to them nor they to you?" I said. "I know them," he returned, "as well as I know my own face when I look at myself in a glass." On which I remarked that it was very wonderful. "'Tis only a part of the wonder, and not the biggest part," he said. "You've seen what they are like and how like they are, but if you passed a day with them in the house you'd be able to tell one from the other; but if you lived a year in the same house with their two brothers you'd never be able to tell one from the other and be sure you were right. The strangest thing is that the brothers who, like their sisters, have two or three years between them, are not a bit like their sisters; they are blue-eyed and seem a different race." That, I said, made it more wonderful still. A curiously symmetrical family. Rather awkward for their neighbours, and people who had business relations with them. "Yes--perhaps," he said, "but it served them very well on one occasion to be so much alike."