If this was Mr. Hood’s hope, it was ill-founded and destined to disappointment. A scene was but a faint description of what was in store for that hopeful gentleman. Within ten minutes the greater part of the company were in a world in which the sun and moon seemed to have turned topsy-turvy and the last limit of unlikelihood had been reached. Pierce had imagined he was very near that limit of the imagination when he groped after the vanishing temple in the dark forest. But nothing he had seen in that darkness and solitude was so fantastic as what he saw next in broad daylight in a crowd. At one extreme edge of the crowd there was a sudden movement--a wave of recoil and wordless cries. The next moment it had swept like a wind over the whole populace, and hundreds of faces were turned in one direction--in the direction of the road that descended by a gradual slope towards the woods that fringed the vicarage grounds. Out of those woods at the foot of the hill had emerged something that might from its size have been a large light grey omnibus. But it was not an omnibus. It scaled the slope so swiftly, in great strides, that it became instantly self-evident what it was. It was an elephant, whose monstrous form was moulded in grey and silver in the sunlight, and on whose back sat very erect a vigorous middle-aged gentleman in black clerical attire, with blanched hair and a rather fierce aquiline profile that glanced proudly to left and right. The police inspector managed to make one step forward, and then stood like a statue. The vicar, on his vast steed, sailed into the middle of the marketplace as serenely as if he had been the master of a familiar circus. He pointed in triumph to one of the red and blue posters on the wall, which bore the traditional title of “White Elephant Sale.” “You see I’ve kept my word,” he said to the lady in a loud, cheerful voice. “I’ve brought a white elephant.” The next moment he had waved his hand hilariously in another direction, having caught sight of Hood and Crane in the crowd. “Splendid of you to come!” he called out. “Only you were in the secret. I told you I’d got a white elephant.” “So he did,” said Hood; “only it never occurred to us that the elephant was an elephant and not a metaphor. So that’s what he meant by Asiatic atmosphere and snow and mountains. And that’s what the big shed was really for.” “Look here,” said the inspector, recovering from his astonishment and breaking in on these felicitations. “I don’t understand all these games, but it’s my business to ask a few questions. Sorry to say it, sir, but you’ve ignored our notifications and evaded our attempts to----” “Have I?” inquired Mr. White brightly. “Have I really evaded you? Well, well, perhaps I have. An elephant is such a standing temptation to evasion, to evanescence, to fading away like a dewdrop. Like a snowdrop perhaps would be more appropriate. Come on, Snowdrop.”