Now if you know little of England and of the temper of the English (I mean of 0.999 of the English people and not of the 0.001 with which you associate), if, I say, you know little or nothing of your fellow-countrymen, you may imagine that all this conversation was wasted. "It was not to the point," you say. "You got no nearer the Griffin." You are wrong. Such conversation is like the kneading of dough or the mixing of mortar; it mollifies and makes ready; it is three-quarters of the work; for if you will let your fellow-citizen curse you and grunt at you, and if you will but talk to him on matters which he knows far better than you, then you have him ready at the end. So had I this man, for I asked him point-blank at the end of all this: "_What about the Griffin?_" He looked at me for a moment almost with intelligence, and told me that he would hand me over in the next village to a man who was going through March. So he did, and the horse of this second man was even faster than that of the baker. The horses of the Fens are like no horses in the world for speed. * * * * * This horse was twenty-three years old, yet it went as fast as though all that tomfoolery men talk about progress were true, and as though things got better by the process of time. It went so fast that one might imagine it at forty-six winning many races, and at eighty standing beyond all comparison or competition; and because it went so fast I went hammering right through the town of March before I had time to learn its name or to know whither I was driving; it whirled me past the houses and out into the country beyond; only when I had pulled up two miles beyond did I know what I had done and did I realise that I had missed for ever one of those pleasures which, fleeting as they are, are all that is to be discovered in human life. It went so fast, that before I knew what had happened the Griffin had flashed by me and was gone. * * * * * Yet I will affirm with the tongue of faith that it is the noblest house of call in the Fens. * * * * * It is better to believe than to handle or to see. I will affirm with the tongue of faith that the Griffin is, as it were, the captain and chief of these plains, and has just managed to touch perfection in all the qualities that an inn should achieve. I am speaking not of what I know by the doubtful light of physical experience, but of what I have seen with the inward eye and felt by something that transcends gross taste and touch.