It was with a fairly untroubled mind that Wolf set off the following afternoon for King’s Barton. And it was with a peculiar sense of recovery that he found himself seated side by side with Mr. Urquhart at the littered table in the great library-window.
Incredibly fragrant were the garden-scents that flowed in upon him, past the Squire’s pendulous eye-folds, Napoleonic paunch, and withered pantaloon-legs. The old rogue had discovered a completely new stratum of obscene Dorset legends. He had got on the track now of accounting for certain local cases of misbehaviour, on the grounds of libidinous customs reverting to very remote times. He was, in fact, at this moment gathering all the material he could find about the famous “Cerne Giant,” whose phallic shamelessness seemed by no means confined to its harmless representation upon a chalkhill.