TWO:"There is a story in Pidgin-English verse of how a Chinese student befriended an American, who was a photographer by profession. The American believed that one good turn deserved another, and so, when the[Pg 416] examination time came round, he photographed 'The Classics' on the finger-nails of his Oriental friend. The student was allowed to wear spectacles during his examination, and so he bought a pair of magnifying-glasses that enabled him to read every word that he wanted. He came out at the head of his class, and was no doubt very thankful that he had done a kindly action towards a stranger.Now the Curate, apart from a tendency to lose his head on occasion, was a perfectly[Pg 101] normal individual. There was nothing myopic about him. The human mind is so constituted that it can only receive certain impressions of abnormal phenomena slowly and through the proper channels. All sorts of fantastic ideas, intuitions, apprehensions and vague suspicions had been dancing upon the floor of the Curate's brain as he noticed certain peculiarities about his companion. But he would probably not have given them another thought if it had not been for what now happened.