To the memory of my dear friend Walter Low...

On the Night of the Strange Bird, many people at Sidderton (and some nearer) saw a Glare on the Sidderford moor. But no one in Sidderford saw it, for most of Sidderford was abed. All day the wind had ...

Sandy Bright was coming down the road from Spinner’s carrying a side of bacon he had taken in exchange for a clock. He saw nothing of the light but he heard and saw the Strange Bird. He suddenly heard...

The Vicar of Siddermorton (which is nine miles inland from Siddermouth as the crow flies) was an ornithologist. Some such pursuit, botany, antiquity, folklore, is almost inevitable for a single man in...

If it were not for collectors England would be full, so to speak, of rare birds and wonderful butterflies, strange flowers and a thousand interesting things. But happily the collector prevents all tha...

There is a place on the moor where the black water shines among the succulent moss, and the hairy sundew, eater of careless insects, spreads its red-stained hungry hands to the God who gives his creat...

Now there are some things frankly impossible. The weakest intellect will admit this situation is impossible. The Athenaeum will probably say as much should it venture to review this. Sunbespattered fe...

Now in the land of the Angels, so the Vicar learnt in the course of many conversations, there is neither pain nor trouble nor death, marrying nor giving in marriage, birth nor forgetting. Only at time...

“I have,” said the Angel, “a most unusual feeling⁠—here. Have had since sunrise. I don’t remember ever having any feeling⁠—here before.” “Not pain, I hope,” said the Vicar. “Oh no! It is quite differe...

Let us be plain. The Angel of this story is the Angel of Art, not the Angel that one must be irreverent to touch⁠—neither the Angel of religious feeling nor the Angel of popular belief. The last we al...

The Curate’s wife and her two daughters and Mrs. Jehoram were still playing at tennis on the lawn behind the Vicar’s study, playing keenly and talking in gasps about paper patterns for blouses. But th...

“Those,” said the Vicar, “were ladies.” “How grotesque,” said the Angel, smiling and smelling the sweet briar. “And such quaint shapes!” “Possibly,” said the Vicar. “Did you, ahem, notice how they beh...

So the Angel was invested in a pair of nether garments of the Vicar’s, a shirt, ripped down the back (to accommodate the wings), socks, shoes⁠—the Vicar’s dress shoes⁠—collar, tie, and light overcoat....

Then Doctor Crump arrived. Grummet had met him not a hundred yards from the vicarage gate. He was a large, rather heavy-looking man, with a clean-shaven face and a double chin. He was dressed in a gre...

“That is an Angel,” whispered the Vicar. “You don’t understand.” “What?” said the Doctor in a quick, sharp voice. His eyebrows went up and he smiled. “But the wings?” “Quite natural, quite⁠ ⁠… if a li...

The Vicar opened the door half mechanically to let out Crump, and saw Mendham, his curate, coming up the pathway by the hedge of purple vetch and meadowsweet. At that his hand went up to his chin and ...

The Angel had finished his tea and was standing looking pensively out of the window. He thought the old church down the valley lit by the light of the setting sun was very beautiful, but he could not ...

“Are all men so odd as this?” said the Angel. “I’m in such a difficult position,” said the Vicar. “You see,” he said, and stopped, searching his chin for an idea. “I’m beginning to see,” said the Ange...

The Angel and the Vicar sat at dinner. The Vicar, with his napkin tucked in at his neck, watched the Angel struggling with his soup. “You will soon get into the way of it,” said the Vicar. The knife a...

So the Angel dined and talked to the Vicar, and presently the night came and he was overtaken by yawning. “Yah⁠—oh!” said the Angel suddenly. “Dear me! A higher power seemed suddenly to stretch my mou...

The Curate stood in front of the looking-glass and solemnly divested himself of his collar. “I never heard a more fantastic story,” said Mrs. Mendham from the basket chair. “The man must be mad. Are y...

And thus in the little bedroom over the gable we reach a first resting place in this story. And as we have been hard at it, getting our story spread out before you, it may be perhaps well to recapitul...

The Vicar going to call the Angel, found him dressed and leaning out of his window. It was a glorious morning, still dewy, and the rising sunlight slanting round the corner of the house, struck warm a...

After breakfast the Vicar went into the little room next his study to find a book on Political Economy for the Angel to read. For the Angel’s social ignorances were clearly beyond any verbal explanati...

Very unwisely, as I think, the Vicar allowed the Angel to go down into the village by himself, to enlarge his ideas of humanity. Unwisely, because how was he to imagine the reception the Angel would r...

Then the Angel came in sight of the forge, where Sandy Bright’s brother was shoeing a horse for the carter from Upmorton. Two hobbledehoys were standing by the forge staring in a bovine way at the pro...

The Angel went on through the village, finding it all wonderful enough. “They begin, and just a little while and then they end,” he said to himself in a puzzled voice. “But what are they doing meanwhi...

After that incident the Angel walked along past the mill and round behind the church, to examine the tombstones. “This seems to be the place where they put the broken pieces,” said the Angel⁠—reading ...

In Siddermorton Park is Siddermorton House, where old Lady Hammergallow lives, chiefly upon burgundy and the little scandals of the village, a dear old lady with a ropy neck, a ruddled countenance and...

“That’s all right,” said Crump when the bandaging was replaced. “It’s a trick of memory, no doubt, but these excrescences of yours don’t seem nearly so large as they did yesterday. I suppose they stru...

After the Angel had left Crump’s house he went up the hill again towards the Vicarage. But⁠—possibly moved by the desire to avoid Mrs. Gustick⁠—he turned aside at the stile and made a detour by the La...

“I heard someone playing the fiddle in the Vicarage, as I came by,” said Mrs. Jehoram, taking her cup of tea from Mrs. Mendham. “The Vicar plays,” said Mrs. Mendham. “I have spoken to George about it,...

The Angel came thoughtfully by the hedge across the field towards the Vicarage. The rays of the setting sun shone on his shoulders, and touched the Vicarage with gold, and blazed like fire in all the ...

At the dinner table the Angel told the Vicar the more striking of his day’s adventures. “The strange thing,” said the Angel, “is the readiness of you Human Beings⁠—the zest, with which you inflict pai...

When Lady Hammergallow made up her mind, things happened as she resolved. And though the Vicar made a spasmodic protest, she carried out her purpose and got audience, Angel, and violin together, at Si...

Mrs. Jehoram and the Angel (apart)⁠—Mr. Wilmerdings playing. “I have so longed for a quiet word with you,” said Mrs. Jehoram in a low tone. “To tell you how delightful I found your playing.” “I am gla...

This section is (so far as my memory goes) the shortest in the book. But the enormity of the offence necessitates the separation of this section from all other sections. The Vicar, you must understand...

“He’s drunk!” said Mr. Rathbone-Slater, breaking a terrific silence. “That’s the matter with him.” Mrs. Jehoram laughed hysterically. The Vicar stood up, motionless, staring. “Oh! I forgot to explain ...

So, ingloriously, ended the Angel’s first and last appearance in Society. Vicar and Angel returned to the Vicarage; crestfallen black figures in the bright sunlight, going dejectedly. The Angel, deepl...

The Vicar’s table-talk at dinner that night, after the Angel had stated his case, was full of grim explanations, prisons, madness. “It’s too late to tell the truth about you now,” said the Vicar. “Bes...

She was only four or five yards away from the Angel in the westward gable. The diamond-paned window of her little white room was open. She knelt on her box of japanned tin, and rested her chin on her ...

Early the next morning the Angel went down through the village, and climbing the fence, waded through the waist-high reeds that fringe the Sidder. He was going to Bandram Bay to take a nearer view of ...

Sir John Gotch was a little man with scrubby hair, a small, thin nose sticking out of a face crackled with wrinkles, tight brown gaiters, and a riding whip. “I’ve come, you see,” he said, as Mrs. Hini...

The Angel lay upon the summit of the cliff above Bandram Bay, and stared out at the glittering sea. Sheer from under his elbows fell the cliff, five hundred and seven feet of it down to the datum line...

Mrs. Hinijer surprised the Vicar by tapping at his study door after tea. “Begging your pardon, Sir,” said Mrs. Hinijer. “But might I make so bold as to speak to you for a moment?” “Certainly, Mrs. Hin...

“The fact is,” said the Vicar, “this is no world for Angels.” The blinds had not been drawn, and the twilight outer world under an overcast sky seemed unspeakably grey and cold. The Angel sat at table...

Delia sat with her window open, hoping to hear the Angel play. But that night there was to be no playing. The sky was overcast, yet not so thickly but that the moon was visible. High up a broken cloud...

On the morning of the next day the Angel, after he had breakfasted, went out towards the moor, and Mrs. Hinijer had an interview with the Vicar. What happened need not concern us now. The Vicar was vi...

Sir John Gotch (still smarting over the business of the barbed wire) was riding along one of the grassy ways through the preserves by the Sidder, when he saw, strolling slowly through the trees beyond...

It was some minutes after the footsteps of the Angel had died away in the distance that Gotch raised himself on his hand. “By Jove!” he said. “Crump’s right.” “Cut at the head, too!” He put his hand t...

But the Angel, thinking that Gotch was dead, went wandering off in a passion of remorse and fear through the brakes and copses along the Sidder. You can scarcely imagine how appalled he was at this la...

But when he came over the brow of the moor, a vivid light sprang up before him and refused to be ignored. He came on down the hill and speedily saw more distinctly what the glare was. It came from dar...

There was a cry of “Delia” and no more. But suddenly the flames spurted out in a blinding glare that shot upward to an immense height, a blinding brilliance broken by a thousand flickering gleams like...

And there the story of the Wonderful Visit ends. The Epilogue is in the mouth of Mrs. Mendham. There stand two little white crosses in the Siddermorton churchyard, near together, where the brambles co...