It was arranged on both sides that I should, in the first instance, go on a month's visit to the young lady.
If we both wished it at the end of the time, I was to stay, on terms arranged to my perfect satisfaction.

There was our treaty! The next day I started for my visit by the railway.
My instructions directed me to travel to the town of Lewes in Sussex.
Arrived there, I was to ask for the pony-chaise of my young lady's father--described on his card as Reverend Tertius Finch.

The chaise was to take me to the rectory-house in the village of Dimchurch.

And the village of Dimchurch was situated among the South Down Hills, three or four miles from the coast.
When I stepped into the railway carriage, this was all I knew.

After my adventurous life--after the volcanic agitations of my republican career in the Doctor's time--was I about to bury myself in a remote English village, and live a life as monotonous as the life of a sheep on a hill?
Ah, with all my experience, I had yet to learn that the narrowest human limits are wide enough to contain the grandest human emotions.