Anyway I looked out at the window in the early morning, and if I had seen a ghost I could not have been more surprised. And so would you--for there, calmly grazing on the field just under my window, as quietly as if it had been a cow, was a huge elephant! I did not see any circus vans, nor the tents, nor anything--save and except this great Indian elephant in the middle of the green field! You may imagine I thought that I was still dreaming. I watched it pad-padding softly about, taking the greatest pleasure in rolling like a donkey when the harness is taken off. It also rubbed the big soft spreads of its feet on the softer grass. I suppose its poor soles were sore with traveling over our hard cycling roads, and now it was keeping Sunday after its kind, doing its best to obey the commandment. And, as father says, what more can any of us do than be fully persuaded in our own minds? One thing I noticed which astonished me, and I think it will most people. The big beast must have weighed a ton, I should think, at the least. And yet, as it went here and there over the field of nice Galloway grass, it walked so softly that the grass "rose elastic from its airy tread." Yes, it actually did. Even Mr. Sherlock Holmes himself could hardly have found a footmark in a quarter of an hour. Why, even the Maid, not to speak of myself, could not get so lightly over the ground as that. We watched the elephant all that day, whenever we could, that is--and thought of him in church, though the minister was a nice man, nice-looking too, and did not preach too long. It was, of course, frightfully wicked of us. Because it was in one of the old "Kirks of the Martyrs" that the service was held. But when the minister came to see us in the evening, we showed him the elephant still grazing away, wig-wagging its long trunk like a supple pendulum, and switching away quite imaginary flies with its tiny tail! The minister was such a very good sort that we thought we ought to own up why we had been restless in church. (He might have seen us, you know.) So I said we were ashamed that we had not attended better to his sermon. And do you know what he answered back, after seeing the elephant take a double donkey roll, with its great sausagey legs in the air? "I'm glad," he said, "that I did not see the elephant do that _before_ sermon. For if I had, I don't believe that I could have preached!" "A pretty nice sort of a minister, that!" said Hugh John afterwards. "I should go to his church myself," cried Toady Lion, and then, checking himself suddenly under the gaze of Hugh John, he added, "I mean, when I had to!" There--that is quite enough to put in my Diary about a circus elephant, though I will admit that it was about the very queerest thing that ever happened to me in all my life--I mean the most unexpected, of course, for when explained it was all perfectly simple.