Page:Arthur Machen - The Hill of Dreams.djvu/147

THE HILL OF DREAMS 'Very shocking.'

'It has distressed the bishop. Martin is a hard-working man enough, and all that, but those sort of things can't be tolerated. The bishop told me that he had set his face against processions.'

'Quite right: the bishop is perfectly right. Processions are unscriptural.'

'It's the thin end of the wedge, you know, Dixon.'

'Exactly. I have always resisted anything of the kind here.'

'Right. Principiis obsta, you know. Martin is so imprudent. There's a way of doing things.'

The 'scriptural' procession led by Lord Beamys broke up when the stalls were reached, and gathered round the nobleman as he declared the bazaar open.

Lucian was sitting on a garden-seat, a little distance off, looking dreamily before him. And all that he saw was a swarm of flies clustering and buzzing about a lump of tainted meat that lay on the grass. The spectacle in no way interrupted the harmony of his thoughts, and soon after the opening of the bazaar he went quietly away, walking across the fields in the direction of the ancient mounds he desired to inspect. 137