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“‘All the better if you’re anyways modest,’ says I. ‘You couldn’ find a retirededer place than this–not if you searched: an’ we don’t mind.’

“Well, sir, the end was we stripped ’em naked as Adam, an’ spread their clothes to dry ‘pon the grass. While we tended on ’em the mild young man told us how it had happened. It seems they’d come by excursion from Exeter. There’s a blind home at Exeter, an’ likewise a cathedral choir, an’ Sunday school, an’ a boys’ brigade, with other sundries; an’ this year the good people financin’ half a dozen o’ these shows had discovered that by clubbin’ two sixpences together a shillin’ could be made to go as far as eighteenpence; and how, doin’ it on the co-op, instead of an afternoon treat for each, they could manage a two days’ outin’ for all–Exeter to Penzance an’ the Land’s End, sleepin’ one night at Penzance, an’ back to Exeter at some ungodly hour the next. It’s no use your askin’ me why a man three-parts blind should want to visit the Land’s End. There’s an attraction about that place, an’ that’s all you can say. Everybody knows as ’tisn’ worth seein’, an’ yet everybody wants to see it. So why not a blind man?

“Well, this Happy Holiday Committee (as they called themselves) got the Company to fix them up with a special excursion; an’ our blind friends–bein’ sensitive, or maybe a touch above mixin’ wi’ the schoolchildren an’ infants–had packed themselves into this rear compartment separate from the others. One of ’em had brought his concertina, an’ another his flute, and what with these an’ other ways of passin’ the time they got along pretty comfortable till they came to Gwinear Road: an’ there for some reason they were held up an’ had to show their tickets. Anyways, the staff at Gwinear Road went along the train collectin’ the halves o’ their return tickets. ‘What’s the name o’ this station?’ asks my blind friend, very mild an’ polite. ‘Gwinear Road,’ answers the porter;’ Penzance next stop.’ Somehow this gave him the notion that they were nearly arrived, an’ so, you see, when the train slowed down a few minutes later an’ came to a stop, he took the porter at his word, an’ stepped out. Simple, wasn’t it? But in my experience the curiousest things in life are the simplest of all, once you come to inquire into ’em.”

“What I don’t understand,” said I, “is how the train came to stop just there.”

Mr. Tucker gazed at me rather in sorrow than in anger. “I thought,” said he, “’twas agreed I should tell the story in my own way. Well, as I was saying, we got those poor fellas there, all as naked as Adam, an’ we was helpin’ them all we could–some of us wringin’ out their underlinen an’ spreading it to dry, others collectin’ their hats, an’ tryin’ which fitted which, an’ others even dredgin’ the pool for their handbags an’ spectacles an’ other small articles, an’ in the middle of it someone started to laugh. You’ll scarce believe it, but up to that moment there hadn’t been so much as a smile to hand round; an’ to this day I don’t know the man’s name that started it–for all I can tell you, I did it myself. But this I do know, that it set off the whole gang like a motor-engine. There was a sort of ‘click,’ an’ the next moment–

“Laugh? I never heard men laugh like it in my born days. Sort of recoil, I s’pose it must ha’ been, after the shock. Laugh? There was men staggerin’ drunk with it and there was men rollin’ on the turf with it; an’ there was men cryin’ with it, holdin’ on to a stitch in their sides an’ beseechin’ everyone also to hold hard. The blind men took a bit longer to get going; but by gosh, sir! once started they laughed to do your heart good. O Lord, O Lord! I wish you could ha’ see that mild-mannered spokesman. Somebody had fished out his spectacles for en, and that was all the clothing he stood in–that, an’ a grin. He fairly beamed; an’ the more he beamed the more we rocked, callin’ on en to take pity an’ stop it.