hot afternoon. Probably over eighty. Your mind, what there is of it, is whirling with avian expectations. I say, 'what there is of it,' because most of your nervous energy is down there, digesting your dinner. A man who has been lying in the bracken stands up before you and you blaze away. Over he goes—and as it happens—as it happens—he has reduplicate fore limbs, one pair being not unlike wings. It's a coincidence certainly. And as for his iridescent colours and so forth——— Have you never had patches of colour swim before your eyes before, on a brilliant sunlit day?… Are you sure they were confined to the wings? Think."
"But he says he is an Angel!" said the Vicar, staring out of his little round eyes, his plump hands in his pockets.
"Ah!" said the Doctor with his eye on the Vicar. "I expected as much." He paused.
"But don't you think…" began the Vicar.
"That man," said the Doctor in a low, earnest voice, "is a mattoid."
"A what?" said the Vicar.
"A mattoid. An abnormal man. Did you notice the effeminate delicacy of his face? His tendency to quite unmeaning laughter? His neglected hair? Then consider his singular dress…"
The Vicar's hand went up to his chin.
"Marks of mental weakness," said the Doctor. "Many of this type of degenerate show this same disposition to assume some vast mysterious credentials. One will call himself the Prince of Wales, another the Archangel Gabriel, another the Deity even.
155
