matter of two days he had crossed that spaciousvalley, with its
frozen surge of green hills, its little villages and townships

here and there, its copses and cornfields, its ponds and streams
like jewelery of diamonds and silver glittering in the sun. The

North Downs were hidden, far away beyond the Wealden Heights.
Down below was the little village of Cocking, and half-way up the

hill, a mile perhaps to the right, hung a flock of sheep grazing
together. Overhead an anxious peewit circled against the blue,

and every now and then emitted its feeble cry. Up here the heat
was tempered by a pleasant breeze. Mr. Hoopdriver was possessed

by unreasonablecontentment; he lit himself a cigarette and
lounged more comfortably. Surely the Sussex ale is made of the

waters of Lethe, of poppies and pleasant dreams. Drowsiness
coiled insidiously about him.

He awoke with a guilty start, to find himself sprawling prone on
the turf with his cap over one eye. He sat up, rubbed his eyes,

and realised that he had slept. His head was still a trifle
heavy. And the chase? He jumped to his feet and stooped to pick.

up his overturned machine. He whipped out his watch and saw that
it was past two o'clock. "Lord love us, fancy that!--But the

tracks'll be all right," said Mr. Hoopdriver, wheeling his
machine back to the chalky road. "I must scorch till I overtake

them."
He mounted and rode as rapidly as the heat and a lingering

lassitude permitted. Now and then he had to dismount to examine
the surface where the road forked. He enjoyed that rather.

"Trackin'," he said aloud, and decided in the privacy of his own
mind that he had a wonderful instinct for 'spoor.' So he came

past Goodwood station and Lavant, and approached Chichester
towards four o'clock. And then came a terrible thing. In places

the road became hard, in places were the crowded indentations of
a recent flock of sheep, and at last in the throat of the town

cobbles and the stony streets branching east, west, north, and
south, at a stone cross under the shadow of the cathedral the

tracks vanished. "O Cricky!" said Mr. Hoopdriver, dismounting in
dismay and standing agape. "Dropped anything?" said an inhabitant

at the kerb. "Yes," said Mr. Hoopdriver, "I've lost the spoor,"
and walked upon his way, leaving the inhabitant marvelling what

part of a bicycle a spoor might be. Mr. Hoopdriver, abandoning
tracking, began asking people if they had seen a Young Lady in

Grey on a bicycle. Six casual people hadn't, and he began to feel
the inquiry was conspicuous, and desisted. But what was to be

done?
Hoopdriver was hot, tired, and hungry, and full of the first

gnawings of a monstrousremorse. He decided to get himself some
tea and meat, and in the Royal George he meditated over the

business in a melancholy frame enough. They had passed out of his
world--vanished, and all his wonderful dreams of some vague,

crucial interference collapsed like a castle of cards. What a
fool he had been not to stick to them like a leech! He might have

thought! But there!--what WAS the good of that sort of thing now?
He thought of her tears, of her helplessness, of the bearing of

the other man in brown, and his wrath and disappointment surged
higher. "What CAN I do?" said Mr. Hoopdriver aloud, bringing his

fist down beside the teapot.
What would Sherlock Holmes have done? Perhaps, after all, there

might be such things as clues in the world, albeit the age of
miracles was past. But to look for a clue in this intricate

network of cobbled streets, to examine every muddy interstice!
There was a chance by looking about and inquiry at the various

inns. Upon that he began. But of course they might have ridden
straight through and scarcely a soul have marked them. And then

came a positivelybrilliant idea. "'Ow many ways are there out of
Chichester?" said Mr. Hoopdriver. It was really equal to Sherlock

Holmes--that." If they've made tracks, I shall find those tracks.
If not--they're in the town." He was then in East Street, and he

started at once to make the circuit of the place, discovering
incidentally that Chichester is a walled city. In passing, he

made inquiries at the Black Swan, the Crown, and the Red Lion
Hotel. At six o'clock in the evening, he was walking downcast,

intent, as one who had dropped money, along the road towards
Bognor, kicking up the dust with his shoes and fretting with

disappointed pugnacity. A thwarted, crestfallen Hoopdriver it
was, as you may well imagine. And then suddenly there jumped upon

his attention--a broad line ribbed like a shilling, and close
beside it one chequered, that ever and again split into two.

"Found!" said Mr. Hoopdriver and swung round on his heel at once,
and back to the Royal George, helter skelter, for the bicycle

they were minding for him. The ostler thought he was confoundedly
imperious, considering his machine.

AT BOGNOR
XXI

That seductive gentleman, Bechamel, had been working up to a
crisis. He had started upon this elopement in a vein of fine

romance, immensely proud of his wickedness, and really as much in
love as an artificial oversoul can be, with Jessie. But either

she was the profoundest of coquettes or she had not the slightest
element of Passion (with a large P) in her composition. It warred

with all his ideas of himself and the feminine mind to think that
under their flattering circumstances she really could be so

vitally deficient. He found her persistentcoolness, her more or
less evidentcontempt for himself, exasperating in the highest

degree. He put it to himself that she was enough to provoke a
saint, and tried to think that was piquant and enjoyable, but the

blisters on his vanity asserted themselves. The fact is, he was,
under this standingirritation, getting down to the natural man

in himself for once, and the natural man in himself, in spite of
Oxford and the junior Reviewers' Club, was a Palaeolithic

creature of simple tastes and violent methods. "I'll be level
with you yet," ran like a plough through the soil of his

thoughts.
Then there was this infernaldetective. Bechamel had told his

wife he was going to Davos to see Carter. To that he had fancied
she was reconciled, but how she would take this exploit was

entirely problematical. She was a woman of peculiar moral views,
and she measured marital infidelity largely by its proximity to

herself. Out of her sight, and more particularly out of the sight
of the other women of her set, vice of the recognised description

was, perhaps, permissible to those contemptible weaklings, men,
but this was Evil on the High Roads. She was bound to make a

fuss, and these fusses invariably took the final form of a
tightness of money for Bechamel. Albeit, and he felt it was

heroic of him to resolve so, it was worth doing if it was to be
done. His imagination worked on a kind of matronly Valkyrie, and

the noise of pursuit and vengeance was in the air. The idyll
still had the front of the stage. That accurseddetective, it

seemed, had been thrown off the scent, and that, at any rate,
gave a night's respite. But things must be brought to an issue

forthwith.
By eight o'clock in the evening, in a little dining-room in the

Vicuna Hotel, Bognor, the crisis had come, and Jessie, flushed
and angry in the face and with her heart sinking, faced him again

for her last st,ruggle with him. He had tricked her this time,
effectually, and luck had been on his side. She was booked as

Mrs. Beaumont. Save for her refusal to enter their room, and her
eccentricity of eating with unwashed hands, she had so far kept

up the appearances of things before the waiter. But the dinner
was grim enough. Now in turn she appealed to his better nature

and made extravagant statements of her plans to fool him.
He was white and vicious by this time, and his anger quivered

through his pose of brilliant wickedness.
"I will go to the station," she said. "I will go back--"