78 JOURNEY WITHOUT MAPS

go, perched up beside the Noah's ark with the lonely
convictions she shared with .the Maoris. She had been
made to pay two hundred pounds for her relics; the
printing press had passed out of her hands; but she
had an immense conviction of success. "They tell me
the movement is making great progress in the Oxford
colleges."

Mr. Charles Seitz was the son of a doctor. He
was born in Bombay two years before the Mutiny
and he died in 1933 frozen to death in a cottage
on a bed of straw. He was the kind of figure that
attracts legends. Even his real name was lost in
common speech, so that he was known among the
Cainpden villagers as Charlie Sykes, as he padded
down the High Street bent double under a weight of
incredible rags, clutching a tall stick, his bearded
Apostle face bent to the pavement, his eyes flicker-
ing sideways, aware of everyone who passed. He
was suspiciously like a stage madman; he played up
to strangers, bellowing and shaking his stick, so that
they edged away a little daunted. Sometimes in
summer he went berserk in the market-place, shout-
ing and shaking all alone in a desert of indifference;
no one took him seriously, least of all himself.
He earned money from Americans with kodaks,
snapped picturesquely in front of the ancient butter
market.

There were two rival stories of how his madness
started* One was romantic, an unhappy love-affair.
The other was probably the true one, that his brain
gave way from overwork for a medical degree. Once
aa inhabitant of Carapden spoke in his hearing of
an operation; Charlie Sykes, beating his chest,