The death of Bradley is the topic of discussion at a local pub called "The George" and provides a segue into talk about the 1752 conversion of England to the Gregorian calendar and the resulting "missing" eleven days. Much is made over how days might be done away with and the temporal effect on those who were alive at the time. The discussion grows heated and scientific by turns and introduces a new territory to the book with the revelation that Macclesfield recruited a cadre of "Asiatic Pygmies" to colonize the missing time and preserve temporal flow. The pygmies, Mason states, now live perpetually in the past, eleven days behind the rest of British society and may occasionally be glimpsed moving as ghosts in the present.