Page:Chesterton - The Club of Queer Trades.djvu/180

The Club of Queer Trades near Purley. That's where we shall find him."

"But there is no such place," groaned Rupert; but he followed his brother down-stairs.

We all followed him. We snatched our hats from the hat-stand and our sticks from the umbrella-stand; and why we followed him we did not and do not know. But we always followed him, whatever was the meaning of the fact, whatever was the nature of his mastery. And the strange thing was that we followed him the more completely the more nonsensical appeared the thing which he said. At bottom, I believe, if he had risen from our breakfast-table and said, "I am going to find the Holy Pig with Ten Tails," we should have followed him to the end of the world.

I don't know whether this mystical feeling of mine about Basil on this occasion has got any of the dark and cloudy color, so to speak, of the strange journey that we made the same evening. It was already very dense twilight when we struck southward 162