Page:Tales of the long bow.pdf/298

 this strange organization had originated in certain wild bets or foolish practical jokes indulged in by a small group of eccentrics. But they had prided themselves on the logical, if rather literal, fashion in which they had fulfilled certain vows about white elephants or flying pigs. Hence, when they came to stand for a policy of peasant proprietorship, and were enabled by the money of an American crank to establish it in a wide-spread fashion across the west of England, they took the more serious task with the same tenacity. When their foes mocked them with 'the myth of three acres and a cow,' they answered: 'Yes, it is as mythical as the cow that jumped over the moon. But our myths come true.'

"The inexplicable and indeed incredible conclusion of the story was due to a new fact; the fact of the actual presence of the new peasantry. They had first come into complete possession of their farms, by the deed of gift signed by Enoch Oates in the February of 19– and had thus been settled on the land for a great many years when Lord Eden and his Cabinet finally committed themselves to the scheme of Land Nationalization by which their homesteads were to pass into official control. That curious and inexplicable thing, the spirit