itself. A finger-post suddenly jumped out at him, vainly
indicating an abrupt turn to the right, and Mr. Hoopdriver would

have slowed up and read the inscription, but no!--the bicycle
would not let him. The road dropped a little into Milford, and

the thing shied, put down its head and bolted, and Mr. Hoopdriver
only thought of the brake when the fingerpost was passed. Then to

have recovered the point of intersection would have meant
dismounting. For as yet there was no road wide enough for Mr.

Hoopdriver to turn in. So he went on his way--or to be precise,
he did exactly the opposite thing. The road to the right was the

Portsmouth road, and this he was on went to Haslemere and
Midhurst. By that error it came about that he once more came upon

his fellow travellers of yesterday, coming on them suddenly,
without the slightest preliminaryannouncement and when they

least expected it, under the Southwestern Railway arch. "It's
horrible," said a girlish voice; "it's brutal--cowardly--" And

stopped.
His expression, as he shot out from the archway at them, may have

been something between a grin of recognition and a scowl of
annoyance at himself for the unintentional intrusion. But

disconcerted as he waas, he was yet able to appreciate something
of the peculiarity of their mutual attitudes. The bicycles were

Iying by the roadside, and the two riders stood face to face. The
other man in brown's attitude, as it flashed upon Hoopdriver, was

a deliberate pose; he twirled his moustache and smiled faintly,
and he was conscientiously looking amused. And the girl stood

rigid, her arms straight by her side, her handkerchief clenched
in her hand, and her face was flushed, with the faintest touch of

red upon her eyelids. She seemed to Mr. Hoopdriver's sense to be
indignant. But that was the impression of a second. A mask of

surprised recognition fell across this revelation of emotion as
she turned her head towards him, and the pose of the other man in

brown vanished too in a momentaryastonishment. And then he had
passed them, and was riding on towards Haslemere to make what he

could of the swift picture that had photographed itself on his
brain.

"Rum," said Mr. Hoopdriver. "It's DASHED rum!"
"They were having a row."

"Smirking--" What he called the other man in brown need not
trouble us.

"Annoying her!" That any human being should do that!
"WHY?"

The impulse to interfere leapt suddenly into Mr. Hoopdriver's
mind. He grasped his brake, descended, and stood looking

hesitatingly back. They still stood by the railway bridge, and it
seemed to Mr. Hoopdriver's fancy that she was stamping her foot.

He hesitated, then turned his bicycle round, mounted, and rode
back towards them, gripping his courage firmly lest it should

slip away and leave him ridiculous. "I'll offer 'im a screw
'ammer," said Mr. Hoopdriver. Then, with a wave of fierce

emotion, he saw that the girl was crying. In another moment they
heard him and turned in surprise. Certainly she had been crying;

her eyes were swimming in tears, and the other man in brown
looked exceedingly disconcerted. Mr. Hoopdriver descended and

stood over his machine.
"Nothing wrong, I hope?" he said, looking the other man in brown

squarely in the face. "No accident?"
"Nothing," said the other man in brown shortly. "Nothing at all,

thanks."
"But," said Mr. Hoopdriver, with a great effort, "the young lady

is crying. I thought perhaps--"
The Young Lady in Grey started, gave Hoopdriver one swift glance,

and covered one eye with her handkerchief. "It's this speck," she
said. "This speck of dust in my eye."

"This lady," said the other man in brown, explaining, "has a gnat
in her eye."

There was a pause. The young lady busied herself with her eye. "I
believe it's out," she said. The other man in brown made

movements indicating commiserating curiosityconcerning the
alleged fly. Mr. Hoopdriver--the word is his own--stood

flabber-gastered. He had all the intuition of the simple-minded.
He knew there was no fly. But the ground was suddenly cut from

his feet. There is a limit to knighterrantry --dragons and false
knights are all very well, but flies! Fictitious flies! Whatever

the trouble was, it was evidently not his affair. He felt he had
made a fool of himself again. He would have mumbled some sort of

apology; but the other man in brown gave him no time, turned on
him abruptly, even fiercely. "I hope," he said, "that your

curiosity is satisfied?"
"Certainly," said Mr. Hoopdriver.

"Then we won't detain you."
And, ignominiously, Mr. Hoopdriver turned his machine about,

struggled upon it, and resumed the road southward. And when he
learnt that he was not on the Portsmouth road, it was impossible

to turn and go back, for that would be to face his shame again,
and so he had to ride on by Brook Street up the hill to

Haslemere. And away to the right the Portsmouth road mocked at
him and made off to its fastnesses amid the sunlit green and

purple masses of Hindhead, where Mr. Grant Allen writes his Hill
Top Novels day by day.

The sun shone, and the wide blue hill views and pleasant valleys
one saw on either hand from the sandscarred roadway, even the

sides of the road itself set about with grey heather scrub and
prickly masses of gorse, and pine trees with their year's growth

still bright green, against the darkened needles of the previous
years, were fresh and delightful to Mr. Hoopdriver's eyes But the

brightness of the day and the day-old sense of freedom fought an
uphill fight against his intolerablevexation at that abominable

counter" target="_blank" title="vt.&n.偶然相遇；冲突">encounter, and had still to win it when he reached Haslemere. A
great brown shadow, a monstroushatred of the other man in brown,

possessed him. He had conceived the brilliant idea of abandoning
Portsmouth, or at least giving up the straight way to his

fellow-wayfarers, and of striking out boldly to the left,
eastward. He did not dare to stop at any of the inviting

public-houses in the main street of Haslemere, but turned up a
side way and found a little beer-shop, the Good Hope, wherein to

refresh himself. And there he ate and gossipped condescendingly
with an aged labourer, assuming the while for his own private

enjoyment the attributes of a Lost Heir, and afterwards mounted
and rode on towards Northchapel, a place which a number of

finger-posts conspired to boom, but which some insidious turning
prevented him from attaining.

HOW MR. HOOPDRIVER REACHED MIDHURST
XIV

It was one of my uncle's profoundest remarks that human beings
are the only unreasonable creatures. This observation was so far

justified by Mr. Hoopdriver that, after spending the morning
tortuously avoiding the other man in brown and the Young Lady in

Grey, he spent a considerable part of the afternoon in thinking
about the Young Lady in Grey, and contemplating in an optimistic

spirit the possibilities of seeing her again. Memory and
imagination played round her, so that his course was largely

determined by the windings of the road he traversed. Of one
general proposition he was absolutely convinced. "There's

something Juicy wrong with 'em," said he--once even aloud. But
what it was he could not imagine. He recapitulated the facts.

"Miss Beaumont --brother and sister--and the stoppage to quarrel
and weep--it was perplexing material for a young man of small

experience. There was no exertion he hated so much as inference,
and after a time he gave up any attempt to get at the realities

of the case, and let his imagination go free. Should he ever see