It was as if she had been wooed by a river-god, who might any time take her to his wondrous halls below a watery heaven.

Hussein's being taken to his execution from his cell in an American military detention center in the postmidnight chill of Saturday had a surreal and even cinematic quality.

I was, however, but a very brief period employed as a strapper, as from the care and pains which I took in cleaning and watering the horses they soon mended in their jaded, worn-out appearance, for they were regularly fed, because I was regularly sober, a state, I have been informed, in which my predecessor was never in after mid-day.

The cob was a cracknel or simnel made of fine flour.