The Argosy — page 122: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

107 A MYSTERY. | SHALL always say, always think, it was a curious thing we chanced to go that day, of all days, to Pigeon Green. It is not chance that brings about these strange coincidences. ‘There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will.” Pigeon Green, a small colony of a dozen houses, formed a triangle, as may be said, with Timberdale and Evesham, being a few miles distant from each. Old Mr. and Mrs. Beele, life-long friends of the Squire, livedhere. ‘Their nephew had brought his newly-married wife from London to show her to them, and we were all invited to dinner. As the Squire did not care to be out in the dark, his sight not being what it used to be, the dinner hour was fixed for two o’clock. We started in the large open phaeton, the Squire driving his favourite horses, Bob and Blister. It was the nineteenth of October. Mrs. Todhetley complained of the cold as we went along. The lovely weather of September had left us; early winter seemed to be setting in with a vengeance. ‘The easterly wind was unusually high, and the skies were leaden. On this same wintry morning Mr. St. George left Timberdale in his gig for Worcester, accompanied by Ellin Delorane. St. George had business to transact with Philip West, a lawyer, who was Mr. Delorane’s agent in Worcester. Philip West lived in the Foregate Street, his offices being in the same house. Ellin was very intimate with his wife, formerly Mary Coney, and was invited to spend a few days with her. It was Aunt Hester who had urged the acceptance of this in- vitation : seeing that Ellin was nervous at the non-arrival of her lover, William Brook, was peeping into the newspapers for accounts of ship- wrecks and other calamities at sea. So they set off after breakfast, Ellin well wrapped up, in this stylish gig of Mr. St. George’s. There are gigs and gigs, you know, and I assure you some gigs were yet fashionable vehicles in those days. | It was bitterly cold. St. George, remarking that they should have snow as soon as the high wind would let it come down, urged his handsome grey horse toa fleet pace, and they soon reached Worcester. He drove straight to Foregate Street, which lay at the other end of the town, set down Ellin, and then went back again to leave his horse and gig at the Hare and Hounds in College Street, the inn at which he generally put up, retracing his steps on foot to Mr. West’s. And now I must return to ourselves. After a jolly dinner at two o’clock with the Beeles, and a jolly dessert after it, including plenty of fresh filberts and walnuts, and Conniclbooolks (SO)