CHAPTER XXXI

WHICH, BEING THE LAST, IS VERY PROPERLY THE LONGEST IN THE BOOK. In those benighted days when men went abroad cased in steel, and, upon very slight provocation, were wont to smite each other with axes and clubs, to buffet and skewer each other with spears, lances, swords, and divers other barbarous engines; in that dark and doughty age, ignorant though they were of all those smug maxims and excellent moralities with which we are so happily blessed--even in that unhallowed day, when the solemn tread of the policeman…