"Coming at the close of a day's ramble to Pewsey, a small town near
the source of the Avon, we visited its parish churchyard and happened
upon the memorial to the unfortunate Robinsons. An old man was
stooping over the turf beside it, engaged in gathering mushrooms,
numbers of which grew in the grass around this stone, _but nowhere
else in the whole enclosure_. The old man, who proved to be the
sexton, assured us not only of this, but also that previous to the
interment of the Robinsons no mushrooms had grown within a mile of
the spot. He added that, albeit regarded with abhorrence by the more
superstitious inhabitants of Pewsey, the fungi were edible, and gave
no trouble to ordinary digestions (his own, for example); nor upon
close examination could Mr. Micklethwaite detect that they differed
at all from the common _agaricus campestris_. So, sirs, concludes my
tale."
Mr. Fett ended amid impressive silence.
"I don't feel altogether so keen-set as I did five minutes back,"
muttered Billy Priske.
"For my part," said Mr. Fett, anointing the gridiron with a pat of
ship's butter, "I offer no remark upon it beyond the somewhat banal
one by which we have all been anticipated by Hamlet.
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